How to Play Solitaire
When people say solitaire they almost always mean Klondike, the game that shipped on every Windows computer for 30 years. This guide takes you through it from the first deal to the last card, and then through the handful of choices that decide whether a deal turns into a win or a dead end.
You do not need to memorize anything to start. Deal the cards, send the Aces up when you see them, and the rest follows. You can play a hand here while you read if that helps it stick.
The goal
Everything in Klondike points at the 4 foundations. You win when all 52 cards have been moved onto them, each suit stacked in order with the Ace at the bottom and the King on top. The 7 columns below, the stock, the waste, all the shuffling around, exist for one reason: to free the cards you need and feed them up to those 4 piles in the right order.
The table
A Klondike table has 4 parts. Once you can name them the rules read easily.
- The stock is the face down pile in the top left. It holds the cards you have not dealt into play yet.
- The waste sits next to the stock. When you draw from the stock, the card lands here face up, ready to be played.
- The foundations are the 4 empty spaces across the top. Each one is built up in a single suit, the Ace first, then the two, on up to the King.
- The tableau is the 7 columns. This is where most of the game happens.
How the cards are dealt
The cards are dealt across the 7 columns from left to right, so the first column has 1 card, the second has 2, on up to 7 in the last. Only the bottom card of every column starts face up. The other 24 cards become the stock. Online you do not deal any of this by hand; the table is set the moment the page loads, but it helps to know why the right side of the board looks so much taller than the left.
The moves
There are only a few legal moves in Klondike. Learn these and you know the game.
Build the columns down in alternating colors
Inside the tableau you stack cards downward, switching color at every step. A red six goes on a black seven. A black five goes on that red six. Every card you add is one rank lower and the opposite color. You can move a single card or a whole run that already follows the pattern. This is the main way you tidy the board and dig out the face down cards underneath.
Flip a face down card when you uncover it
When you move the last face up card off a pile and reveal a face down card, that card turns over and joins the game. Freeing these hidden cards is the real work of a hand, which is worth keeping in the back of your mind for the strategy further down.
Send Aces and low cards to the foundations
An Ace can always go straight to a foundation. After that each foundation only accepts the next card up in its own suit: the two of hearts on the Ace of hearts, then the three, working up the suit toward the King. Aces and twos are safe to send up the moment you see them. Higher cards need more thought.
Only a King fills an empty column
When you clear a column it does not stay open for any card. A King, or a run of cards led by a King, is the only thing you can move into the gap. This is one of the rules that catches new players, and it is also the reason emptying a column is not always the good news it looks like.
Draw from the stock when the board stalls
Sooner or later the cards on the table stop giving you moves. Drawing from the stock turns up a new card on the waste pile, and the top card of the waste is always available to play onto the tableau or a foundation. When the stock runs out you can turn it over and go through it again.
The moves that win games
The rules are simple, but most deals are lost through a few quiet mistakes rather than an illegal move. Here is where games are actually won.
Chase the hidden cards, not the foundations
It is tempting to send every card you can up to the foundations because it feels like progress. It often is not. A card on a foundation is hard to get back, and you frequently need it on the tableau to land another card of the other color. The better instinct is to ask which move turns over a face down card. Those moves open the board. A foundation move that frees nothing can usually wait.
Do not open a column with nowhere to fill it
An empty column is only useful if you have a King to drop into it. Clear a column with no King in sight and you have handed yourself a hole you cannot use, often while burying the very cards you were trying to reach. Before you empty a column, look for the King, and ideally a Queen of the opposite color to sit on it next.
Think before you send a middle card up
Aces and twos go up without a second thought. A five or a six is different. Send a black six to its foundation too soon and the red five that wanted to sit on it has nowhere to go, and a run you were building falls apart. When a card is doing useful work in the tableau, leave it there until you are sure you no longer need it.
That is the short version of winning play. If you want to take it further, the guide to winning at Solitaire goes deeper into reading the board, working the stock and knowing when a deal is already lost.
Draw 1 and Draw 3
Most versions let you choose how many cards you turn over from the stock at a time. Draw 1 flips a single card, so every card in the stock is reachable on the next pass. It is the gentler setting and the better place to learn. Draw 3 flips 3 at once and only the top of the 3 is playable, so the order of the stock starts to matter and some cards take real planning to reach. The rules are otherwise identical. If you are new, start on Draw 1 and move to Draw 3 when you want a harder game.
Short answers
Is every game of solitaire winnable?
No. With a normal shuffle, a fair number of deals have no solution no matter how well you play. Our default games use deals that have a known solution, so when you lose one it is down to the moves rather than the shuffle. There is a fuller answer, with the actual numbers, in is solitaire winnable.
Can I take a move back?
Yes. Undo reverses your last move, and you can keep undoing back through the hand. There is no penalty for it in normal play, though leaderboards may keep clean games separate from games that used undo or hints.
How long does a game take?
A few minutes once you know the rules. A careful Draw 3 game can run longer, and a deal that is going badly can be given up and reshuffled at any time.
What if I cannot read the cards clearly?
Make them bigger. The large card version uses the same game with much larger, higher contrast cards, which is the usual fix when small cards are the real problem.