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Klondike Solitaire is the most famous single-player card game in the world. It is played with a standard 52-card deck dealt across four areas: the tableau of seven columns (with cards face-down underneath and one face-up card on top of each), the stock (the remaining cards held face-down), the waste (cards flipped from the stock), and the four empty foundation piles where you eventually want every card to end up.
The goal is to move all 52 cards to the four foundations. Each foundation is built up by suit, starting with an Ace at the bottom and ending with a King on top. The tableau is your working area: it is built downward in alternating colors (a red card on a black card, then a black card on the next red, and so on). Cards move between columns to expose buried face-down cards, which are then flipped over and become available to play.
Solitaire — or Patience in British English — likely originated in 18th-century France as a fortune-telling diversion. Klondike, the specific version everyone knows, became one of the most-played computer games of all time when Microsoft shipped it with Windows 3.0 in 1990. It was bundled specifically to teach users mouse drag-and-drop skills. By some estimates, more cumulative human time has been spent on Microsoft Solitaire than on any other piece of software ever written.
An empty tableau column is the single most valuable resource in Klondike. It serves as a free landing spot for any King you want to relocate, and Kings are the keys that unlock buried sequences. Whenever you can create an empty column without sacrificing something more important, do it.
Conversely, never fill an empty column carelessly. Only move a King into it when that move clearly opens up a buried card, lets you build a long sequence, or frees a critical low card. An empty column held in reserve is usually worth more than an empty column casually used.
Before filling an empty column with a King, check which color King you're placing. The opposite-color Queen needs to be available somewhere to continue the sequence — placing a King that strands a buried Queen is a common amateur error.
It feels natural to send every low card to the foundation as soon as it appears — and the auto-complete buttons in most modern Solitaire games encourage this. But 2s and 3s are often more useful in the tableau than on the foundation. They are landing spots for higher cards of opposite color and they keep your tableau flexible.
Send Aces up immediately (they have no tableau use), but for 2s and 3s, ask whether you'll need them as landing pads first. Once a card moves to the foundation it is very hard to bring back — most variants allow it only as a last resort and some forbid it altogether. Foundation moves are nearly permanent.
When you move a long sequence of cards from one tableau column to another, you typically expose a buried face-down card. Before making the move, look at what the move opens up and decide whether the newly revealed card has somewhere useful to go. Otherwise you may just trade one stuck position for another.
The best players think two or three moves ahead: "If I move this sequence here, then I can flip that face-down card, which is probably playable to the foundation or to that column there." If you can't sketch the chain, the move probably isn't ready yet.
The stock contains 24 cards you haven't seen yet, and depending on the variant you may be allowed unlimited passes through it or only one or three. Every pass through the stock changes which card sits on top of the waste — so the order in which you play waste cards affects which cards become available later.
In one-pass or three-pass variants this is critical: count the cards still hidden in the stock and plan when each key card will resurface. Wasting a pass without using anything from the waste is often a mistake unless you're deliberately repositioning the deck for a future combo.
Desktop: Click and drag any face-up card or sequence to its destination column or foundation. Double-click a card to auto-send it to its foundation if a legal slot exists. Click the stock pile to flip the next card or set of cards into the waste.
Mobile / Tablet: Tap a card to select it and then tap its destination, or drag the card directly. Double-tap for auto-foundation. Tap the stock to flip.
The game runs full-screen on phones and adapts to any screen size. Portrait orientation works well on phones; landscape is better on tablets where the full tableau spread is more comfortable to scan.
Solitaire is not a single game but a whole family of single-player card games. The most popular variants include:
Klondike remains the entry point everyone learns first. Once you're comfortable with it, FreeCell and Spider are the natural next steps.
The goal of Klondike Solitaire is to move all 52 cards into four foundation piles, one for each suit. Each foundation is built up in order from Ace to King in the same suit. You use the seven tableau columns and the stock pile as your working area to free buried cards and move them into the right order.
Klondike hides most cards face-down in the tableau and uses a stock pile, so part of the puzzle is uncovering cards you cannot yet see. FreeCell deals every card face-up from the start, so all information is open. As a result, FreeCell is purely a logic puzzle while Klondike has a real element of luck depending on the shuffle.
Microsoft shipped Solitaire with Windows 3.0 in 1990 to help users practice mouse skills, especially click-and-drag, as they transitioned from text-only DOS systems. The game taught millions of office workers how to use a mouse without them realizing they were learning, and it became one of the most-played computer games of all time by accident.
No. Klondike has unwinnable deals because some cards are dealt face-down in positions where they can never be freed in time. Statistical estimates suggest that around 79 percent of standard Klondike deals are theoretically winnable with perfect play, but in practice human players win a much smaller percentage because the game requires foresight and not every winning line is obvious.
In the tableau you build downward in alternating colors. A red 7 can be placed on a black 8, a black 6 on a red 7, and so on. Only a King may be moved into an empty tableau column. You can move a single card or a properly ordered sequence of cards between columns to expose buried cards underneath. See our brain training science guide for related cognitive research.
Aces always go to the foundation eventually, but rushing every low card up can lock you out of useful tableau moves. Sending an Ace right away is usually safe, but 2s and 3s are often more valuable in the tableau as landing spots for higher cards in alternating colors. Send low cards up only when you no longer need them as building blocks.
Put empty-column strategy and patient foundation timing into practice now.
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