A game of "La Belle Lucie" in progress.

The layout at the start of the game of "La Belle Lucie."

La Belle Lucie is a solitaire game where the object is to build the cards into the foundations. It is also known as "Three Shuffles and a Draw," "Alexander the Great," and "Midnight Oil" to name a few and has some variations. ImageMetadata File history File links 3_Shuffles_and_a_Draw,_In_Progress. ... ImageMetadata File history File links 3_Shuffles_and_a_Draw,_In_Progress. ... ImageMetadata File history File links 3_Shuffles_and_a_Draw,_Start. ... ImageMetadata File history File links 3_Shuffles_and_a_Draw,_Start. ... This article is about the solitaire family of card games. ...

The tableau consists of seventeen piles of three cards each with a single card counting as an eighteenth pile. Only the top card of each pile could be played. Any aces are moved to the foundations and are built from there. Play continues by moving cards to the foundations by suit in ascending order (e.g. 2♦ over A♦) or to the other piles by suit in descending order (e.g. 7♣ over 8♣). When a pile becomes empty, it can not be filled again.

Once all possible moves have been exhausted, the entire tableau is reshuffled and redealt, again in piles of three with the remainder counting as a separate pile. There are only two reshuffles allowed in the game.

When all possible moves have been exhausted after the two reshuffles without finishing, the player can still make one last possible move called a merci (French for "thank you"), wherein one can pick out (or draw) a buried card, i.e. any card that is not the top card of any pile, and use it to continue the game and finish it. This special move and three shuffles involved (including the original shuffling of the cards before the start of any new game) gives the game the name "Three Shuffles and a Draw".

The game is considered won when all cards are transferred into the foundations.

As already mentioned there are some variations to the game.

• The solitaire program Pretty Good Solitaire lists La Belle Lucie and Three Shuffles and a Draw separately because its version of La Belle Lucie ironically disallows the merci. In fact, some rule sets, especially those written in books about Patience (i.e. books on solitaire published in Britain) never mentioned the merci at all.
• On the other hand, the book Card Games for Dummies by Barry Rigal (ISBN 0-7645-5050-0) specifies that the tableau should have sixteen piles of three cards each and the four remaining cards formed into two piles of two.
• Yet in another variation (like in Interplay's version of the game in Solitaire Deluxe), the aces are immediately transferred to the foundations and the remaining 48 cards are shuffled and dealt in sixteen piles of three to begin the game. This version is called Trefoil.
• The solitaire program Midnight Oil offers a free version of La Belle Lucie for Windows.