Klondike Solitaire strategy: how to win more games

01Is Solitaire luck or skill?

Both. The shuffle decides which deals are possible, and some deals cannot be won however well you play. But inside a winnable deal, the order of your moves matters enormously. Two players with the same cards can finish one with a win and the other with a stuck table.

That is good news. It means you can improve, and the habits below are the ones that make the difference. If you want to practise, our Solitaire game offers winnable deals, which a solver has proven can be won, so a loss is always down to the choices you made, not the shuffle.

02The order to think in: a checklist for every move

Before you touch the stock, run through the same checklist each time. It takes seconds and it stops most mistakes.

• Can I turn over a face-down card? If a move uncovers a hidden card, prefer it.
• If two moves both uncover a card, which one uncovers it in the taller pile? A pile with five hidden cards is worth more than one with one.
• Can I play an Ace or a 2 to a foundation? Do it, it is nearly always safe.
• Is there a card on the waste I can play? Use it before it gets buried.
• Only now: is drawing from the stock the best thing left?

03Free the face-down cards first

There are 21 face-down cards at the start, and every one of them is a card you cannot use yet. Your first goal in any game is to turn them over, and the tallest columns come first because they hide the most.

That is why a column of seven with six hidden cards is a priority and a column of one is not. If you have a choice of two black 7s for a red 6, put the red 6 on the one that frees the taller pile. When you move a run of cards, you also free the card beneath: choose the move that does that.

04Aces, twos and the foundation trap

Moving cards to the foundations feels like progress, and early on it is. Aces and 2s are almost always safe to send up. But from the 5s and 6s upward, a card on the foundation is a card that cannot support a card of the opposite colour on the columns.

Imagine a red 6 on the foundation while a black 5 in the stock needs a red 6 to land on. A good rule is to keep the foundations balanced: do not run one suit far ahead of the others. Our game's auto-move follows a simple safe rule: a card goes home automatically only when it cannot be needed on the columns, for example when both cards of the opposite colour one rank lower are already on their foundations.

05How to use empty columns

An empty column is only valuable if you have a King to put in it. Without one it is a hole, and it may stay empty for the rest of the game. So do not rush to clear a column unless a King is within reach, either in the waste, in the stock you are about to draw, or at the end of another column.

When you do have a choice, prefer to place a King that sits on top of face-down cards. That moves the King and also turns over the hidden card. A King that already sits at the bottom of a column should stay where it is.

06Draw 1 versus Draw 3

In Draw 1 you turn over one card at a time, so on every pass through the stock you can reach every card. A careful player wins most Draw 1 deals that can be won. It is a good level for beginners and for relaxed play.

In Draw 3 you turn over three cards and only the top one is playable. The cards beneath it are stuck until you use the top card, and a card's position in the stock matters. A card that is third in a group of three can be reached on the first pass only if you do not use the one above it, and on later passes the groups shift as you take cards away. This is why Draw 3 is much harder and why a good Draw 3 player thinks about the stock as a sequence, not as a pile.

When you play Draw 3, look at the three cards you have drawn, and think about which one you want to play. If you play the top card, the next one is exposed. Sometimes it is better to play nothing now and see the next group first, as long as playing it later is not blocked. Try the two levels in our Solitaire game and see which one you enjoy more: you can change it for every new game.

07Make the stock work for you

Drawing from the stock gives you information, but it also puts a card on the waste that blocks the cards beneath it. Draw only when you have run out of useful moves on the table. In Draw 3, write the passing order in your head: remember the cards you saw in the first pass, because they come back in the same order on the second.

If you can play a waste card to the table, check whether playing it exposes a card underneath that you also want. If it does, play it at once. If it exposes nothing useful and the card is better placed later, leave it.

08Winnable and unwinnable deals

No strategy can win a deal that has no solution. Roughly speaking, with all cards visible a large majority of Klondike deals can be won in Draw 1, and fewer in Draw 3, but a real player, who cannot see the face-down cards, wins fewer still. So you should expect to lose some games, and that is not a sign that you are playing badly.

That is the reason our game offers a Winnable option. A solver played each of these deals through with every card visible and found a win. You still have to find it without seeing the hidden cards, so it is a real game, but you know that a solution exists, which makes losing more instructive. Random deals are also available and are labelled as random.

09Scoring: standard and Vegas

Standard scoring gives 10 points for a foundation card, 5 for a waste card moved to a column and 5 for turning a card face up, and takes away points for recycling the waste, so it rewards making steady progress. Vegas scoring turns each foundation card into 5 dollars against a 52 dollar stake, and limits how often you can go through the stock. In Vegas, patience matters, because you cannot cycle the stock as many times as you like.

In Vegas Draw 1 you get a single pass through the stock, so every draw must count. Think about what you can play before you turn each card, and keep a card on the waste only if you have a plan for it.

10When you are stuck

First, check the Hint. It will point to a foundation move, a move that turns a card over or a waste card that fits, and it will point to the stock if nothing else is left. If it points to the stock and the stock is empty, you may be stuck for good.

Second, use Undo. Unlimited undo lets you test an idea, such as moving a run to see what it uncovers, and take it back if it does not work. Third, check whether a foundation card could come back down to a column. This is rare and costs points in standard scoring, but sometimes it frees a card you need.

11A short practice plan

Play ten Draw 1 winnable deals and use the checklist on every move. Aim to win at least half of them. Then try Draw 3 with winnable deals, and note how often a deal is lost because of the order of the stock. Finally, try the daily deal and compare notes with friends, because everyone gets the same one.

New to the two-deck version? Read Spider Solitaire for beginners, and for more ideas for quiet evenings see the best free card games to play with family online. If you like open-card puzzles, FreeCell removes the luck: every card is visible and almost every deal can be won. If you like long, relaxing sorting, try Spider Solitaire with one suit.