Solitaire rules: how to play Klondike

Solitaire at a glance

If you only remember one thing, remember this: the face-down cards are the real enemy. Every good Klondike decision comes back to turning those cards over as soon as you can.

Setting up the deal

Klondike needs nothing but a shuffled 52-card deck and a bit of table space. If you are playing with real cards, deal like this:

1. Lay out seven cards in a row from left to right. Turn the first one face up and leave the other six face down.
2. Skip the first column. Deal one card onto each of columns two through seven. Turn the card on column two face up.
3. Keep going the same way: each round starts one column further right, and the first card of each round is turned face up.

When you finish, column one has 1 card, column two has 2, and so on up to column seven with 7. That is 28 cards, and exactly one card at the bottom of each column is face up. The 21 face-down cards are what you are fighting to uncover.

Put the remaining 24 cards face down in the top-left corner. This is the stock. Leave room next to it for the waste pile, and leave space across the top right for four foundations.

The four parts of the table

How to play, step by step

There are no turns and no time limit. You simply make legal moves, one at a time, until every card is home or you run out of useful moves.

The legal moves

• Build down in alternating colors. A face-up card may go onto a face-up tableau card one rank higher and the opposite color. A red 6 goes on a black 7; a black Jack goes on a red Queen.
• Move runs together. Any properly built run of face-up cards — say 9♠ 8♦ 7♣ — can move as a unit, as long as the top card of the run (the 9♠) fits where it lands. You may also move just the bottom part of a run, such as the 8♦ 7♣.
• Flip uncovered cards. When the last face-up card leaves a column, turn the face-down card beneath it face up. It is now in play.
• Fill empty columns with Kings only. A column with no cards at all may take a King, or a run that starts with a King. Nothing else.
• Build foundations up by suit. A foundation starts with an Ace. After that, only the next card of the same suit can go on it: A♥, 2♥, 3♥ and so on to K♥.
• Play from the waste. The top waste card can go onto the tableau or a foundation. The cards beneath it wait until it is gone.

Using the stock

When you run out of tableau moves, turn cards from the stock onto the waste.

In Draw 1, you turn one card at a time. Every card in the stock is reachable on every pass, so it is the more forgiving game.

In Draw 3, you turn three cards at once and fan them on the waste, but you may only play the top one. If you play it, the card beneath becomes available. If you don’t, the next draw covers all three with three new cards. When fewer than three cards are left in the stock, you turn over whatever is left.

When the stock is empty, flip the whole waste pile back over — without shuffling — to make a new stock and go through it again. How many times you may do this depends on the rules you play (see Variations).

Winning and losing

You win when all 52 cards are on the foundations. In practice the game is decided earlier: once the stock and waste are empty and every tableau card is face up, the rest is just tidying up, which is why computer versions offer an auto-finish button.

You lose when no move you can make — including going through the stock again — gets a new card into play. Some deals are lost from the very first card; most are lost because of a choice made along the way.

A worked example: the first few moves

Here is how the opening of a real game might go. Notice how every move is chosen for what it turns over.

The deal. The face-up cards from left to right are 6♦, A♣, 9♠, 5♣, 8♥, Q♦ and 4♥. Column seven, on the far right, has six cards hidden under the 4♥.

1. A♣ to a foundation. Aces always go up. Column two flips its hidden card: the 7♣.
2. 4♥ onto the 5♣. A red 4 on a black 5. This is the most valuable move on the table, because it starts digging into the biggest column. Column seven flips a 10♣.
3. 8♥ onto the 9♠. Column five flips the 2♣.
4. 2♣ to the foundation on top of the A♣. Column five flips again: the J♠.
5. J♠ onto the Q♦. A black Jack on a red Queen. Column five flips a 3♦.

Five moves, five face-down cards turned over, and you haven’t touched the stock yet. Now look again: the 6♦ could go on the 7♣, but that only empties column one, and you have no King ready to move in. Leave it for now and start turning the stock.

That pattern — tableau first, stock second, and always favor the move that flips a card — is the core of good Klondike play.

Solitaire scoring

Paper-and-pencil Klondike has no score: you either get all the cards out or you don’t. The scoring systems most people know come from computer versions, and two of them are standard.

Standard scoring

This is the classic Windows-style system, the one BieGames uses when you choose Standard.

Moving cards from one tableau column to another scores nothing by itself, but it usually flips a card, which does. Your score never drops below zero.

When you win, you also get a time bonus of 700,000 divided by the number of seconds the game took (for games of 30 seconds or longer).

Scoring the example above. A♣ up (+10), column two flips (+5), 4♥ move flips a card (+5), 8♥ move flips a card (+5), 2♣ up (+10), column five flips (+5), J♠ move flips a card (+5). That’s 45 points before you’ve drawn a single card. If you went on to win the game in 7 minutes (420 seconds), the time bonus would be 700,000 ÷ 420 ≈ 1,667 points — more than the rest of the game put together. Speed matters in Standard scoring.

Vegas scoring

Vegas scoring imagines the game as a casino bet. You “buy” the deck for $52 and are paid $5 for every card that reaches a foundation. If a card comes back down off a foundation, you lose that $5 again. The stock is limited too: one pass in Draw 1, three passes in Draw 3.

A Vegas example. You get 15 cards onto the foundations before you’re stuck. You were paid 15 × $5 = $75, minus the $52 you paid for the deck, so you’re up $23. With 10 cards you would be down $2, so 11 cards is where you start to come out ahead — and a full win of all 52 cards pays $260, for a profit of $208.

In BieGames your Vegas total carries over from one game to the next, so you can watch your bankroll rise and fall over an evening. For a table set up for Vegas from the first deal, play Vegas Solitaire.

No scoring

Plenty of people ignore points entirely and just count wins. That’s a perfectly good way to play — the real scoreboard in Klondike is your win rate.

Rule questions people argue about

Klondike has been played from books, at kitchen tables and on computers for over a century, so a few rules vary. These are the questions that come up most.

Can any card go into an empty column? In standard Klondike, no — only a King or a run headed by a King. Allowing any card is a common house rule that makes the game noticeably easier.

Can you take a card back off a foundation? Most computer versions, including BieGames, let you move the top foundation card back onto the tableau if it fits. Some strict book rules say foundation cards are final. It costs 15 points in Standard scoring, but it occasionally rescues a game: you might need that black 5 back on the table to hold a red 4.

Can you move just part of a run? Yes. You can split a run anywhere, as long as the card at the split fits where you move it.

Do you have to play a card to the foundation as soon as you can? No. Nothing is ever forced. Aces and twos are always safe to send up, but higher cards are sometimes more useful left on the tableau to build on.

Can a waste card go back to the stock? No. Cards only travel stock → waste → tableau or foundation. The only way back to the stock is turning the entire waste over when the stock runs out.

Is it cheating to use undo? There’s no undo with real cards, so purists don’t use it. On a computer it’s a learning tool, and it’s how most players figure out what went wrong. Use it or don’t — but compare win rates only with people who play the same way.

Common variations and house rules

• Draw 1, single pass. One trip through the stock, one card at a time. This is how many old card-game books describe Klondike, and it is tough.
• Draw 3, three passes. A common middle ground, and the rule Vegas scoring uses for Draw 3.
• Unlimited passes. The computer-era default: go through the stock as often as you like.
• Any card in an empty column. Easier; popular with beginners.
• Thoughtful Solitaire. All cards are dealt face up so you can plan the whole game. It’s mostly used by puzzle fans and by researchers studying how many deals can be won.
• Winnable deals only. Many apps, BieGames included, can check each shuffle with a solver before you see it. You still have to find the solution.

If you like Klondike, its cousins are worth a try: FreeCell shows every card from the start, while Spider and Pyramid change the building rules completely. Our guide to card games to play alone compares them.

Playing Klondike on BieGames

You can change these options in Settings on the Solitaire page:

• Draw: Draw 1 card or Draw 3 cards.
• Scoring: Standard, Vegas or None. Outside Vegas, the stock can be turned over as many times as you like.
• Deals: Winnable deals only (checked by a solver) or Any deal, the way a real shuffle falls.
• Tapping a card: moves it to the best spot, or just selects it so you choose where it goes.
• Send safe cards to the foundations: automatically, or yourself.

Undo and hints are unlimited, and there’s a daily deal — always winnable — that everyone plays.

Solitaire terms

• Tableau — the seven columns where most of the game happens.
• Foundation — one of the four piles, built from Ace to King in a single suit.
• Stock — the face-down pile of undealt cards. Some books call it the hand.
• Waste — the face-up pile of cards turned from the stock. Also called the talon or discard pile.
• Pass or redeal — one trip through the stock, then turning the waste over to start again.
• Build — to place a card on another in the correct order.
• Run or sequence — face-up tableau cards in descending, alternating-color order that can move together.
• Blocked — a position with no useful moves left.
• Klondike — the formal name of the game; “Patience” is the British word for any solitaire game.

Quick questions about the rules

How many cards are in the stock in Solitaire? Twenty-four. The other 28 go to the tableau.

Can you put a Queen in an empty column? Not in standard Klondike. Only a King can start an empty column.

What happens when the stock runs out? Turn the waste pile over to form a new stock, keeping the order, and keep going — as many times as your rules allow.

Does it matter which foundation an Ace goes on? No. Any Ace may start any empty foundation. After that, each foundation belongs to its suit.

Is every game of Solitaire winnable? No. Some shuffles can’t be solved no matter how you play. We dig into the numbers in Are all Solitaire games winnable?

Is Klondike harder in Draw 3? Yes, much harder. You can only reach every third card on each pass, so you have to plan which waste cards to play to bring the ones you need to the top.