Evening Star

Evening Star belongs to the patience games where cards can be played up in both ascending and descending order. A beautiful card pattern emerges at the end.

# Layout

The shuffled stock is placed in the center, one card is drawn and placed face-up above the stock. Then you take the stock in your hand and draw cards, placing them in the center until a different suit appears. In our example, the 4 was drawn as the first foundation card. Then came the 8 and the 6. The next suit, meaning the 6, is placed to the right of center. Cards are then drawn again until another suit appears. The card of the third suit goes below the center. And so on, until the last suit appears. This card goes to the left of center. Now four additional cards are drawn as helper cards and placed between the four foundation cards, creating an eight-pointed star.

# Objective

The four foundation cards in the four different suits Clubs, Hearts, Spades and Diamonds are followed by either ascending or descending same-suit building. The first matching card that can be placed on each foundation card determines this.

# Gameplay

After laying out the Evening Star, check whether a helper card or a card from the helper pile already matches one of the foundation cards, whether ascending or descending. Empty spaces are immediately filled with a new card from the helper pile in the center or from the stock. The stock is then gone through card by card, and each card is either placed on a matching foundation card or on the helper pile in the center. After going through the stock once, the helper pile can be shuffled and used as a new stock two more times. The Evening Star should succeed by then.

# Summary

• Draw one card from the stock and place it above the center, the next suit to the right of it, the third suit below the center and the last suit to the left of it
• Other drawn cards are placed as a helper pile in the center
• Then four more helper cards are drawn and placed between the foundation cards
• Matching helper cards or cards from the helper pile can already be played up and empty spaces are replaced with cards from the stock or helper pile
• Stock may be shuffled and gone through a total of three times
• Objective: same-suit ascending or descending building on the foundation cards

# Similar patience games

• Morning Star