Initial card layout: Montana is started by dealing out all the cards in four rows. The deck can contain from 4 to 13 cards in a suit so this will create 4 to 13 columns across. The aces are removed creating four blank spaces.

Goal: The goal of the game is to move the cards so that each row contains the all the cards of a suit in sequence from 2 on up.

Moving cards: Cards can only be moved to blank spaces. A card can be moved to a blank space if it next in sequence and of the same suit as the card just to the left of the blank space. If the left-most place in a row is blank then there is no previous card. In this case any 2 can be moved to the blank space.

Getting stuck: Often you will make all possible moves and the cards will still not all be in sequence. When this happens you can redeal the cards.

Redealing: In a redeal all the cards that are not in sequence are picked up, shuffled, and put back on the board in the empty spaces created by picking up the cards. The space to the right of the highest card in each sequence is left blank.

Traditionally, Montana allows two redeals. A variation called Addiction allows three redeals. This version allows any number of redeals and keeps track of the number of redeals used to win each game. You can look at the statistics and determine which games would have been won using the redeal limits of traditional Montana or Addiction.

Montana as a puzzle: You see all the cards from the beginning so you can plan ahead. Start with small decks as you are learning how the cards play out.