When someone says "Solitaire," they almost always mean Klondike — the one that shipped on every Windows PC and has quietly eaten more office afternoons than any game in history. It looks like luck, and some deals genuinely can't be won, but most can — and good play is the difference between a 30% and an 80% win rate. Here are the rules and the strategy that actually moves that number.
We build puzzle games, and Klondike is a beautiful example of a game with simple rules and surprisingly deep decisions.
The setup
Klondike uses a standard 52-card deck. You deal into three areas:
- The tableau: seven columns. The first column gets 1 card, the second 2, up to the seventh with 7 — and only the top card of each column is face-up. That's 28 cards.
- The stock (draw pile): the remaining 24 cards, face-down, that you flip through.
- The foundations: four empty piles at the top, one per suit. These are what you're filling to win.
The goal
Build all four foundations up from Ace to King, one suit each: A, 2, 3 … J, Q, K of hearts; the same for diamonds, clubs, spades. Get all 52 cards onto the foundations and you win.
The rules of movement
In the tableau, you build downward in alternating colors. A red 7 can go on a black 8; a black 5 on a red 6. You can move a single face-up card or a whole properly-sequenced run of them onto a valid card.
Foundations build upward by suit, starting with the Ace. Once a card is on a foundation it's usually safest to leave it (with a caveat below).
Empty columns can be filled — but only with a King (or a run starting with a King). This is one of the most important rules in the game.
The stock: flip cards from the stock to the waste pile (one or three at a time, depending on the variant) and play the top waste card when it's useful. When the stock runs out, you can usually recycle the waste into a fresh stock.
Flipping: whenever you move the face-up card off a tableau column, the face-down card beneath it flips face-up — and that's the engine of the whole game.
How to win more (the real strategy)
Klondike rewards a few disciplined habits:
- Always play Aces and 2s to the foundation immediately. They can never help you in the tableau.
- Prioritize flipping face-down cards. The whole game is about revealing the 21 hidden tableau cards. When choosing between two legal moves, pick the one that flips a face-down card — that's real progress; a move that doesn't is often wasted.
- Don't empty a column unless you have a King ready. An empty column you can't fill is dead space. Plan the King move before you clear the last card.
- Don't rush cards to the foundation. A 6 you sent up too early can't catch a 5 you needed to place on it. Keep mid-rank cards available in the tableau as long as they're useful, and only bank them when they're safe.
- Expose the big columns first. The seven-card column hides the most face-down cards — making progress there unlocks the most.
- Work the stock fully before giving up. Cycle through the draw pile; a card you can't use now often becomes playable after a tableau move opens a slot.
- Know your draw variant. "Draw one" (flip a single card from the stock) is far more winnable than "draw three" (flip three, only the top playable). In draw-three, track the order cards come up — sometimes you deliberately play a card now to change which card lands on top next pass. Choosing draw-one when you're learning makes the strategy easier to see before you tackle the harder variant.
Common mistakes
- Flipping the stock mindlessly without first making every useful tableau move. Exhaust the board, then draw.
- Filling an empty column with a non-King, or emptying one with no King in sight.
- Auto-playing every card to the foundation. Speed-banking cards is the most common way a winnable deal becomes unwinnable.
- Giving up early. Many "stuck" games open up after one more pass through the stock.
Why it endures
Klondike survives because each deal is a fresh little optimization puzzle: limited information (face-down cards), meaningful choices, and a satisfying cascade when a column finally collapses into the foundations. That eliminate-and-unlock rhythm is the same one behind Mahjong Solitaire and the logic of a Sudoku.
For more, see our best solitaire and card games roundup — and if you want a daily mental warm-up of a different flavor, a round of Pairdle pairs nicely with your morning game of Klondike.
Flip face-down cards first, hold your Kings for empty columns, and don't bank cards too early — that's how you turn coin-flip games into reliable wins.