Klondike Solitaire, start to finish: the complete beginner's guide

If you've ever played "Solitaire" on a computer, you've almost certainly played Klondike. It's the game with seven columns of cards, a pile of spare cards in the corner, and four empty spaces at the top that you fill from Ace to King. This page is the full guide: where the game comes from, what every part of the layout is called, every rule as this site plays it, and a walk through your very first deal.

If you're mainly curious about your odds, the short version is that a simple computer player that never looks ahead and never takes a move back wins about 42% of deals here. We cover the full numbers on our Solitaire home page. This page is about learning to play well.

Where Klondike comes from

Klondike belongs to a big family of one-player card games known in Britain as "patience" and in the United States simply as "solitaire". The name is usually linked to the Klondike region of Canada's Yukon, the scene of the gold rush of the late 1890s, although nobody has a firm record of who first called the game that. You can read a short history, with its sources, in Wikipedia's article on Klondike.

The game's real fame came much later. Microsoft included a version called Solitaire with Windows 3.0 in 1990, and for many people it became the first thing they ever did with a mouse: dragging a card and dropping it somewhere else. Wikipedia's Microsoft Solitaire article tells that part of the story. Since then Klondike has become the default meaning of the word "solitaire" for millions of Americans.

Five words that explain the whole table

Solitaire has its own small vocabulary. Once you know these five words, every rule makes sense.

The complete rulebook for Klondike on this site

How the 52 cards are laid out

One standard deck of 52 cards is shuffled. The tableau gets 28 of them: one card in the first column, two in the second, and so on up to seven in the last. In every column, just the last card dealt lies face up. The other 24 cards go into the stock, face down.

Building in the tableau

• A card can go onto a card one rank higher and of the opposite color: a red 6 onto a black 7, a black Jack onto a red Queen.
• You can move a whole run at once, as long as its top card fits where you're putting it.
• When you move the face-up cards off a face-down card, that card flips over and joins the game.
• Only a King, or a run that starts with a King, can go into an empty column.

Filling the four top piles

• Each foundation holds one suit, starting with its Ace and going up: Ace, 2, 3 and so on to King.
• You can move a card back down from a foundation to the tableau if you need it there. That's allowed here and occasionally wins a stuck game.

Turning cards from the stock pile

• On this page the stock turns over one card at a time (this mode is called Turn 1).
• When the stock runs out, the waste turns back into a new stock. There's no limit to how many times you can go through it.
• If you'd rather turn three cards at once, use the draw option to switch to Klondike Turn 3.

Winning, and what the game keeps track of

You win when all 52 cards are on the foundations. There's no points table to learn here: the game keeps count of your wins, and shows the time and moves for the game you're playing, so you have something to beat next time if you want it.

A walk-through for your very first deal

Here's a routine that works for almost any deal. Follow it for your first few games and it'll soon become habit.

1. Play any Aces and 2s you can see. Aces go straight to the foundations. They can't help you anywhere else.
2. Look at the seven face-up cards. Can any of them go onto another? Prefer the move that uncovers a face-down card, and if you have a choice, pick the column with the most hidden cards.
3. Only then turn a stock card. Check whether it fits on the tableau or a foundation. If it doesn't, turn the next one.
4. Every time a new card appears, go back to step 1. A freshly flipped card often opens up two or three moves at once.
5. Save empty columns for Kings. Clearing a column feels great, but it's only useful when a King is ready to move in, ideally one that frees a hidden card.
6. When nothing works, press Undo. Go back a few moves and try the other choice you had. It costs nothing here.

Don't worry if the first deal gives you almost nothing to do. In our test of 10,000 deals, 8.6% started with no move at all between the seven face-up cards, so you had to start from the stock. That's normal.

The five decisions that matter most

Which column to dig into

The columns on the right hide more cards. Freeing those cards gives you more options later, so when two moves look equally good, take the one on the right-hand side.

Whether to send a card to the foundation

Aces and 2s: always. Higher cards: wait until you're sure you won't need them to hold a lower card of the other color. A red 5 on the foundation can't catch a black 4 any more.

Which King gets an empty column

If you have a choice, pick the King whose move uncovers a face-down card, or the one that matches a Queen waiting nearby.

When to split a run

Sometimes you can move just the bottom part of a run to free a card you need. It's allowed and often the only way forward.

When to stop

If you've been round the stock several times and nothing new has happened, the deal is probably stuck. Some deals can't be won at all, even by a computer that sees every card. It's fine to deal again.

A small solitaire glossary

• Deal: one shuffled layout; also, starting a new game.
• Pass: one trip through the whole stock.
• Redeal: turning the waste back into the stock.
• Buried card: a card under others that you need to free.
• Blocked: a position where no useful move is left.
• Auto Play: the button that finishes a game once every card is face up and the win is certain.
• Patience: the British word for solitaire games.

What you can use on this page

• It's free, with nothing to download, no account and no email address.
• Large, clear cards and a zoom control for small screens or tired eyes.
• Hint when you're stuck, unlimited Undo, and Restart to try the same deal again.
• Auto Play to send the last cards home.
• Two ways to move: drag a card with your finger or mouse, or tap it and then tap its new spot.
• Sound you can switch off, fullscreen mode and a choice of table colors.

Any up-to-date browser will do, on a laptop, a tablet or your phone.

Where our Klondike numbers come from

The figures on this page come from the study the play-solitaire-free-online.us team at Solitairen OOD ran in September 2026. Briefly, step by step:

1. Rules. We read them from this site's own game code. This page and our home page run the same Klondike engine with the same rules, so one study covers both.
2. Numbered deals. 10,000 shuffled deals, each made from a numbered seed so the test can be repeated exactly.
3. The player. A rule-based program that only sees the cards you'd see and never undoes a move. It won 42.3% of Turn 1 deals (95% range 41.3–43.3%). A patient person with Undo should do better.
4. Real players. On solitairex.io, people won 44.8% of 913,106 Klondike games in the month before July 16, 2025 (source).

The program is written in Python 3.11 using only the standard library (klondike.py), with the deals shared across 19 worker processes. An AI assistant, Claude by Anthropic, lent a hand with writing and reviewing the program and with drafting this guide. Every number above came from running the code, not from the AI. The full method, including the solver that sees every card, is on our Solitaire page.

By Admin, play-solitaire-free-online.us (Solitairen OOD). Research dated September 18, 2026.

Beginner questions about Klondike

Is "Solitaire" just another name for Klondike?

For most people, yes. "Solitaire" is really the name of a whole family of games, but Klondike is the one most people mean by it.

What's the difference between this page and the home page?

The game is the same. This page is the full guide to the rules; the home page focuses on the odds we measured.

Am I allowed to pull a card back down from the top piles?

Yes. On this site you can move a card from a foundation back into the tableau when you need it.

What's the reason only Kings may fill a gap?

That's the classic Klondike rule. It makes empty columns precious, so plan which King will use one.

Once I know Klondike, where should I go next on this site?

Solitaire Double plays the same way with two decks, and FreeCell shows every card from the start.