Solitaire Double: twice the cards, and a game you'll win far more often
Solitaire Double is Klondike played with two full decks shuffled together: 104 cards, nine columns instead of seven, and eight foundations to fill instead of four. It looks more daunting than the classic game. It isn't. For a casual player, it's one of the friendliest games on the site.
We tested that with a simple computer player that plays the way many of us do on a lazy evening: it only looks at the cards in front of it, it never plans ahead, and it never takes a move back. On single-deck Klondike it won 42.3% of deals. On Solitaire Double, the same kind of player won 81.5% of 10,000 deals. Two decks almost doubles your chances.
What a relaxed player can expect
| What we measured | Solitaire Double | Classic Klondike (Turn 1) |
|---|---|---|
| Deals won by a player with no look-ahead and no Undo | 81.5% (95% range 80.7–82.2%) | 42.3% |
| Deals with no move among the face-up cards at the start | 2.7% | 8.6% |
| Aces starting face down | 2.8 of 8, on average | 1.6 of 4, on average |
| Moves in a won game (including stock turns) | about 268 | about 126 |
| Trips through the stock in a won game | 2.7, on average | 2.3, on average |
Every double-deck figure comes from 10,000 numbered deals played under this site's rules. The 81.5% is a floor: a player who uses Undo and thinks a move or two ahead should do better.
Why two decks are kinder
Every card has a twin
With two decks there are two 7s of hearts, two Jacks of spades, and so on. When one card you need is buried, its twin may be sitting in plain sight. That's the biggest reason the game is so forgiving.
Eight foundations give cards more places to go
Each suit has two foundations. A card that can't go up one pile may fit the other, so fewer cards get stranded in the tableau.
You almost always have a first move
With nine face-up cards to start, only 2.7% of our deals had nothing to play from the tableau at the start, against 8.6% of single-deck deals. You rarely begin by staring at a stuck table.
But the games are longer
There are twice as many cards to move home, so a win takes roughly twice as many moves: about 268 for our program against about 126 in the single-deck game. Set aside a little more time.
Solitaire Double rules, exactly as dealt here
- Two decks, 104 cards. Nine tableau columns holding 1, 2, 3 and so on up to 9 cards; only the bottom card of each is face up. The other 59 cards form the stock.
- Building down: one rank lower, opposite color, as in Klondike. Runs move as a unit.
- Empty columns take only a King, or a run starting with a King.
- Eight foundation piles: each suit gets two, and each one climbs from Ace to King.
- The stock turns one card at a time, and you can go through it as many times as you like. On this page Solitaire Double is always played one card at a time; the draw-three option takes you to Solitaire Turn 3, which is the single-deck game.
Five habits that turn a good chance into a win
1. Start with the tall columns
The right-hand columns hide up to eight face-down cards. Freeing them early gives the twin cards a chance to show up where you can use them.
2. Don't panic about buried Aces
On average 2.8 of the 8 Aces start face down. With two of each Ace, one is often in reach while the other is buried, so you can usually get a foundation going early.
3. Pick which twin to use
When both copies of a card could go on the same spot, choose the one whose move uncovers a hidden card or empties a column you want.
4. Keep going round the stock
There's no limit on trips through the stock. Our program's winning games took 2.7 passes on average, so plan on going round a few times.
5. Use Undo when you're not sure
With 104 cards, it's easy to miss a better move. Undo is free and unlimited, so back up and try the other option whenever a choice feels close.
Where casual games still go wrong
- Filling an empty column with a King that doesn't free anything.
- Sending cards to the foundations so fast that the tableau loses its places to build.
- Forgetting that the second foundation for a suit exists.
- Stopping after one pass through the stock when another would have opened the game.
Features you get here
Solitaire Double is free, with nothing to download or sign up for. You get large, clear cards with a zoom control (handy with 104 cards on screen), Hint, unlimited Undo, Restart, Auto Play to finish a solved game, and drag-and-drop or tap-to-move. The game shows wins, time and moves, and you can turn the sound off, go fullscreen or change the table color. Any current browser runs it, whether you're on a desktop, a tablet or a phone.
The research behind these numbers, step by step
The play-solitaire-free-online.us team at Solitairen OOD ran this test in September 2026.
- Rules from the game code. This page's own game file sets up two decks, nine columns of 1 to 9 cards, 59 stock cards, unlimited trips through the stock, alternating-color building, run moves and Kings only in empty columns. It's always one card at a time here.
- Rebuilding the game. We wrote the game as a program, using the same move rules as our single-deck Klondike test but with nine columns and two foundations per suit.
- Numbered deals. We played 10,000 deals, and because each shuffle comes from a numbered seed, anyone rerunning the test gets the very same cards.
- The player. A rule-based program that sees only face-up cards, follows a fixed order of preferences, and never undoes a move. That makes its result a floor, not a ceiling.
- Running it. All 10,000 deals ran in one batch; it won 8,145 of them.
- Published comparison. We searched the most complete published study of solitaire winnability, Blake & Gent (2026), and it has no figure for double-deck Klondike, so there's nothing to compare against yet. Our single-deck program, which uses the same approach, is the fairest comparison: 42.3% there, 81.5% here.
- Margin of error. The "95% range" of 80.7–82.2% is where the true figure for this program almost certainly lies.
- Limits. We didn't run a solver that sees every card for this game, so we can't say how many deals are winnable with perfect play, only that at least 81.5% are winnable by simple play.
The code behind the test
The test is written in Python 3.11 using only the standard library, in a module called doubleklondike.py that extends our single-deck Klondike program. A shared runner spreads the deals across 19 worker processes on a 20-core machine; the whole 10,000-deal run took under five seconds of wall-clock time. Each deal is shuffled from its seed number, and the 95% ranges are Wilson score intervals.
An AI assistant, Claude by Anthropic, helped us write and check the program and put this page into words. It didn't supply any of the results. Every figure comes from running the program.
By Admin, play-solitaire-free-online.us (Solitairen OOD). Research dated September 19, 2026.
Questions new players ask
Is Solitaire Double harder than regular Solitaire?
It takes longer, but in our tests it was much easier to win: 81.5% against 42.3% for the same simple style of play.
Can I play Solitaire Double with three-card draws?
Not on this page. It's always one card at a time; the draw-three option takes you to single-deck Solitaire Turn 3.
How come each suit gets a pair of foundation piles?
Because there are two full decks, each suit has 26 cards, built up from Ace to King twice.
How long should I set aside for one game of Solitaire Double?
A won game took our program about 268 moves, roughly twice a single-deck game. People usually take a bit longer, as we stop to think.
Which game pairs well with Solitaire Double?
Try FreeCell Two Decks for another two-deck game, or go back to classic Klondike.