All you need to play Canfield is a standard deck of 52 cards. No Jokers are involved. The rules were for every card you laid on the foundation, you got $5. If you were able to win the game and lay all 52 cards on the foundation, your winnings were $500.

Count out thirteen cards and lay them face up to one side of the board. You will use these throughout the game, if you can. Lay the next card face up to the upper right hand side of the thirteen cards. You have just started your foundation and won $5.

The foundation card is the lead card and will be the base card to build up your foundations. Let's say you turn up a 5. Your object is to build all cards up in the same suit until you get to the number 4. For this particular example, the foundations would have the order of 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, J, Q K, A, 2, 3, and finally 4.

As you deal the rest of the pack to play upon the foundation, you will be dealing in groups of three with only the topmost card available for play. You can redeal as many times as you like.

While it is great to play cards onto the tableau in hopes of getting them to the foundations and winning $5 for each one, stop and think. Perhaps they will be buried underneath other cards when you need them.

Underneath the foundation is a row of four cards. You will deal these after dealing the first card to the foundation. The four cards will start your tableau. The tableau is built like a Solitaire game and the cards go black on red or red on black downward with Aces being both high and low. A King can be placed on an Ace.

Canfield figured the odds of people being able to win the solitaire game and offered them $500 if they won. Many people accepted his challenge of paying $50 for the deck of cards and trying to make 10 times that amount. More often than not, they went away with far less than $500.

The odds are not favorable for the player and the chances of winning are slim. Mr Canfield also assigned one dealer per game and it was less profitable for him. When you have other games like Blackjack, one croupier can manage a few players.

You do not need a lot of room to play this, so it makes for a great traveling game. It is also great with a smaller deck of cards and a tv tray. In fact, most tv trays can take regular playing cards for this game and they will fit very well.