How to Play Solitaire

Setup: how the cards are dealt

At the start of a game, the 52 cards are laid out like this:

1. Seven columns are formed in the tableau, the first with one card, the second with two, up to the seventh with seven cards.
2. In each column, only the top card is dealt face up; every card underneath stays face down.
3. The remaining 24 cards (52 minus the 28 dealt into the seven columns) form the stock pile, entirely face down, in the top left of the board.
4. The four foundation slots, top right, start empty: they fill up over the course of the game, one per suit.

Allowed moves in the tableau

In the seven tableau columns, a card (or a sequence of cards) can only be placed on a card of the opposite color and one rank higher. For example, a 7 of clubs (black) can be placed on an 8 of hearts or an 8 of diamonds (red), but never on an 8 of spades or clubs. A king, regardless of color, can only be placed on a completely empty column.

When a face-down card ends up on top of a column (because the card above it was moved away), it automatically flips face up and becomes playable. This is the mechanism that drives a game forward: every revealed card opens up new possibilities.

An entire sequence of cards that is already correctly ordered (alternating colors, descending values) can be moved as a block to another column, as long as the bottom card of that sequence follows the opposite-color, one-rank-higher rule relative to the destination card.

Filling the foundations: the actual win condition

The four foundations, one per suit (hearts, diamonds, clubs, spades), only fill in ascending order, and must start with the ace. After the ace comes the 2 of the same suit, then the 3, and so on up to the king. No other suit can be placed on a foundation that has already been started: a hearts foundation only accepts hearts.

The game is won as soon as all four foundations hold their full thirteen cards, ace through king. On this page, a win is shown immediately with a dedicated message and your elapsed time.

One useful habit: sending a card to a foundation as soon as it is possible is not always the best move. A low card (ace, 2, 3) placed on a foundation too early can be exactly the card you need later in the tableau to keep a sequence moving. Recognizing this trade-off is one of the fastest ways to go from frequently stuck deals to regularly finished ones, and it is covered in more depth, along with other habits, on the solitaire tips page.

Using the stock pile and the waste pile

The stock pile, top left, turns over one or three cards at a time depending on your draw mode: each click on it reveals the next card (or cards) face up in the waste pile right next to it. The top card of the waste pile can be played into the tableau or onto a foundation, exactly like any other visible card.

Once the stock pile is empty, its slot shows a recycle icon. Clicking it gathers the whole waste pile back up and rebuilds a new stock pile, in the same order, ready to be turned over again. This recycling can repeat as many times as needed: there is no limit on how many passes through the stock pile you can make on this page.

Quick reference: what can go where

A summary table to look up placement rules quickly, without rereading the full text:

When is a game stuck?

A game of solitaire is considered stuck when no move is possible anywhere: not in the tableau, not onto the foundations, and the stock pile stops revealing anything new after one or two full passes. This happens regularly in Klondike, even for experienced players: the initial shuffle determines whether a deal is mathematically winnable at all, and not every deal is.

In that situation, the simplest option is to start a new game using the button at the top of the board. If you moved a card by mistake, the undo button (top of the board, next to new game) steps back through your move history with no limit on how many times you can use it, and the hint button suggests a legal move if one exists. Klondike is only one variant among several: Spider, FreeCell and Pyramid all use different layouts and rules, and are briefly compared on the free solitaire homepage.