Solitaire
Card games · Patience (solitaire)
Also Klondike, Patience
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Summary — 1 player
Solitaire is Klondike, the one-player patience game everybody means by the name: seven piles, four foundations and a stock to turn. Build the piles down in alternating colours and the foundations up by suit from the ace; a deal is won when all four run ace to king and lost when nothing will move. Turn the stock one card at a time or three, and every deal is a match the app counts.
- Scored by
- Won or lost: the deal is out when all four foundations run ace to king
- Origin
- Uncertain; the earliest documented rules appeared in 1907, and the name Klondike is usually traced to the gold rush
How it plays
1 of 8
The layout
One player and a standard pack. Seven piles go down left to right, each one card longer than the last, and only the card on top of each is turned face up. The twenty-four left over are the stock. Four empty spaces above them are the foundations, and filling those is the whole game.
Rules — Turn one
How to play
Players and equipment
One player and a standard 52-card pack, jokers out. This is Klondike, the patience everybody means by "solitaire", played turning the stock one card at a time.
The deal
Seven piles, each one card longer than the last — one, two, three, up to seven, dealt left to right — with only the top card of each turned face up. The remaining 24 cards are the stock. Four empty foundations sit above.
Play
- Onto the tableau
- Build down in alternating colours: a red six on a black seven
- Onto a foundation
- Build up by suit, starting from the ace
- An empty pile
- Only a king, or a run headed by a king, may fill it
- A face-down card
- Turn it up as soon as the card covering it moves away
The tableau is the seven piles. A face-up run already in order moves as a unit, and so does any part of one counted from the bottom, so long as the card you land on continues the sequence in the opposite colour. Cards come off the stock into a waste pile, and the top of the waste is always available to play. A card may also come back off a foundation onto the tableau, which is sometimes the only way out of a blocked deal.
The stock
Turn it one card at a time, and go back through it as often as you like. Every card in the stock is reachable, which makes this the forgiving game: about four deals in five can be won by somebody who never makes a mistake, and rather fewer by anybody else.
Scoring
Scoring
There is no score: a deal is won or lost, and the app keeps the tally. Each match is one deal. Tap your name when the foundations are full; if the pack wins, end the match unmarked and it still counts as a deal played. The board says how many you have got out of how many dealt.
A worked deal
The tableau has been played as far as it goes, and the stock comes into it one card at a time.
- The stock
- Waste 6♦
- The first card turned is the 6♦; nothing takes it
- Next card
- Waste J♠ over 6♦
- The J♠; nothing takes it either
- Next card
- Waste unchanged
- The 2♥ goes straight up onto the A♥ foundation
- Next card
- Waste 10♦ over J♠
- The 10♦ could go on a black jack, but the J♠ is in the waste and not on a pile
- Later in the pass
- Not yet
- A black seven turns up on the tableau, and the 6♦ is two cards deep in the waste
- The next pass
- Onto the black seven
- The waste is turned over to be the stock again, and the 6♦ is the first card up
Turning one, the buried six is a matter of patience and not of luck: it comes round on the next pass, and the pass after that if you need it. Nothing in the stock is ever out of reach, which is why a deal turning one is lost only when the tableau itself will not open.
- A deal that comes out
- Tap your name
- All four foundations run ace to king
- A deal the pack wins
- End the match unmarked
- The stock is spent and nothing on the table will move
- The board
- 2 of 3
- Three deals dealt, two of them out
Ending
You have won when all four foundations run ace to king. You have lost when the stock is spent and nothing on the table will move.
Strategy
Turn face-down cards up first
A face-down card is the only thing in the game you do not know, and every one you turn up makes the rest of the deal easier to plan. So when two moves are open, prefer the one that turns a card: play from the piles before the waste, and from the pile with more face-down cards under its run before the pile with fewer. A move that shuffles face-up cards from one pile to another and turns nothing has done nothing, and has sometimes closed a door.
When to move a king
An empty pile is worth having only for the king that will fill it, and a king is worth moving only when moving it turns a card or when you hold a queen of the other colour ready to go on it. A king moved into a space for its own sake sits there for the rest of the deal, and the space it left is filled by nothing, because only a king may fill it. When you have the choice, put down the king whose queen you can see; a black king with both red queens buried is a pile that will not grow.
Do not rush cards to the foundations
A card on a foundation is out of play. Aces and twos should go up at once, because nothing builds on them and they block whatever is under them. Above that, ask whether the card is still useful on the tableau: a black five on the foundation cannot take the red four that would free a pile, and the four then has nowhere to go. Keep the foundations roughly level too — a foundation run far ahead of the other three has taken cards the tableau needed. You may bring a card back down off a foundation, and a blocked deal is often opened by exactly that.
The stock cycle
Before you play a card from the waste, think about what lies under it: playing it brings the next card up, and turning three, it changes which cards you will see on the next pass. Turning one, go through the whole stock once without playing anything you do not have to, so you know what is in it, and then play the pass that follows with the whole picture in mind. Turning three, remember that playing one card off a group shifts every group after it by one, so a card that was buried on this pass may be on top on the next — a stuck deal is sometimes freed by playing a card you did not need.
Two piles want the same card
When a red six could go on either of two black sevens, put it on the one with more face-down cards beneath it, because that is the pile you most need to dig out. If they are level, choose the seven whose pile you would rather empty: a short pile that can be cleared makes a space for a king, a long pile cannot. Never split two cards you might need to move together onto different piles without a reason, because a run parted cannot be put back.
FAQs
What are the odds of winning solitaire?
Higher than most people manage. Turning one card at a time with unlimited passes, roughly four deals in five can be won by a player who never makes a mistake and could see every card; at the table, where the face-down cards are unknown and a wrong choice early is not felt until it has cost the deal, far fewer are won. Turning three, fewer still, because a card buried under two others may never come round. A run of lost deals is normal and is not a sign you are playing badly.
What is the difference between turn one and turn three?
How the stock is dealt. Turning one, every card in the stock comes up in turn and can be played, so you can always reach the card you need on some pass. Turning three, the cards come up in groups of three and only the top of each group is playable; the two beneath wait for another pass, and their order is fixed by what you left behind. Turn one is the forgiving game and turn three is the one most people mean, and the one that loses. The tabs above the rules hold the two.
Can you move part of a run in solitaire?
Yes. A face-up run in order moves as a unit, and so does any part of it counted from the bottom: from a run of king down to eight you may take the ten, nine and eight alone, so long as the card you land on is a jack of the opposite colour. You cannot take a card out of the middle and leave the ones below it behind. Some computer versions allow only whole runs to move; the paper game does not have that rule.
What do you do if you get stuck in solitaire?
Look for three things before you give up. A card that could come back down off a foundation to take a card from the tableau; a run that could move in part rather than whole, to turn a card beneath it; and, turning three, a card in the waste you could play only to change which cards come up next pass. If none of those moves anything and the stock is spent, the deal is lost: end the match unmarked and it counts as a deal played.
Can you take a card back off the foundation?
Yes, onto the tableau, so long as it continues a run there — a red six back onto a black seven. It is legal and it is often the only way to unblock a deal. Once a card has gone back down it may go up again later, and nothing is lost. What you may not do is move a card from one foundation to another.
Is solitaire the same as Klondike?
Klondike is the game most people mean when they say solitaire, and the one described here: seven piles, four foundations, a stock turned one card at a time or three. Solitaire, or patience in Britain, is really the family name for every card game for one — Spider, FreeCell and Pyramid are others — but the word has attached itself to Klondike, and on these pages the two names mean the same game.
How many cards are in the stock?
Twenty-four. The seven piles take twenty-eight cards — one plus two plus three, up to seven — and the other twenty-four are turned face down as the stock. Only seven of the twenty-eight are face up at the start, so twenty-one cards on the table and twenty-four in the stock are unknown to you when you begin.
Does a lost deal count?
Yes. Each match is one deal, and a deal the pack wins is still a deal played: end the match unmarked, and the board counts it in the total without counting it as won. That is what makes the count honest — three out of ten means three deals came out, not three deals were played.