Klondike Solitaire: play free online
Klondike is the game almost everyone means by "solitaire". One standard 52-card deck, seven columns on the table, and four foundation piles to fill from the ace up to the king. Win, and every card in the deck has gone home. It is free to play here in the browser — nothing to download, no account.
What makes Klondike what it is: 21 of the 28 cards dealt to the columns start face down. You cannot see them and you cannot move them, and the whole game is the work of turning them over. Learning how to play solitaire takes a minute — the rules below are all of it — and then every deal is a fresh question about which column to open first.
This page plays Klondike turn 1, one card off the stock at a time. For a harder time of it, Klondike turn 3 turns three cards at a time, and Las Vegas gives you a single pass through the deck and scores the cards you rescue.
How to play Klondike Solitaire: the deal
- Tableau: seven columns holding 28 cards, one in the first and seven in the last. Only the last card dealt to each column is face up, at the foot of the fan; the 21 behind it are face down.
- Stock: the 24 cards left over, face down. Click it to turn the next one.
- Waste: where drawn cards land, face up. Only the top one is in play.
- Foundations: four empty piles. No suit is reserved in advance — the first ace to reach a pile decides what it collects.
How to win at Klondike Solitaire
Move all 52 cards to the four foundations, one suit per pile, each built up from the ace to the king. When the last king lands, the game is won.
Klondike Solitaire rules
- Columns build down in alternating colors. A red 7 needs a black 8: the 7♦️ sits on the 8♠️ or the 8♣️, never on the 8♥️.
- A run of cards moves as one block. A 9♣️, 8♦️, 7♠️ already in order travels together onto any red 10. The run has to be unbroken; break the colors and it is refused.
- Only a king can enter an empty column. A king on its own, or a king with the run built on it. No other card may start a column, which makes empty space less free than it looks.
- Foundations go up one card at a time, by suit. The ace of spades first, then the 2♠️, then the 3♠️, from a column or from the waste, never two at once.
- Foundation cards can come back down. When the 4♠️ is the landing spot a red 3 needs, pull it off and play it into a column.
- Face-down cards turn themselves over. The instant the last card covering one is moved away, it flips. You never handle a face-down card directly.
- The stock recycles as often as you like. Click it to turn one card onto the waste; when it empties, click again and the waste flips back face down, unshuffled. The same cards come round in the same order, lap after lap.
- Tap or drag, whichever you prefer. A tap puts the card in the best legal place the game can find; a drag lets you choose, and takes everything stacked on that card with it.
- When no face-down card is left, the game finishes for you. Every remaining card runs up to the foundations on its own, unless you turn that off in Settings.
Klondike Solitaire tips and strategy
- Use up the moves on the table before you draw. A draw never turns over a face-down card. Only tableau moves do, and they are still waiting for you.
- Between two moves, take the one that reveals a face-down card. That is the engine of the whole game. A move that only shuffles face-up cards around buys you nothing.
- Count what is buried. The seventh column hides six face-down cards, the first hides none. A deal whose deep columns open early is a deal that goes somewhere.
- Empty a column only when a king is ready for it. An empty column nobody can fill is wasted work, and taking a king from the waste too early can strand another on a face-down pile.
- Do not rush every card to the foundations. A low card left in a column supports whatever sits above it. Send the 4♥️ up while a black 3 still needs a home and you break a sequence you were building.
- Undo has no limit. It rewinds draws and recycles as well as moves, so trying a line costs nothing. Hint names the strongest move it can see; press it again for the next one.
- Choose the deal, not just the game. New Game offers Easy, Medium and Hard shuffles as well as a random one: the app rates candidate deals on how deeply the aces and 2s are buried and hands you one from the end you picked.
- Some deals cannot be won. When nothing legal is left, the board says so and offers a new one. That is the deal, not a mistake you made.
New to the other classics? FreeCell deals all 52 cards face up and asks you to plan rather than dig, and Spider builds eight sequences in the tableau rather than four foundations. For something quicker, Golf clears the table in one run through the deck, and Scorpion is Klondike's tableau with no stock at all.