Can every FreeCell deal be won?

Almost. Of Microsoft’s 32,000 numbered deals, exactly one — #11982 — has been proven impossible. For practical purposes you should assume any deal in front of you is winnable and that a loss means you made an error.

How many cards can I move at once?

The number of empty free cells plus empty columns, plus one. Four open cells lets you move five cards; three open cells and four empty columns lets you move eight. Moving a run is just a shortcut for what you could do one card at a time.

What can go into an empty column?

Any card, unlike Klondike where only a king qualifies. That flexibility is why an empty column is the most valuable asset in the game.

What are the free cells actually for?

Temporary storage for a single card each — usually to dig a needed card out from underneath something. They are not a dumping ground: every filled cell reduces how many cards you can move.

Why is FreeCell considered harder than Klondike?

Because you cannot blame the cards. Klondike hides half the deck, so losses are often unavoidable. FreeCell shows you everything, which means the difficulty is entirely in the planning — and there is no luck to rescue a bad plan.

Is it worth using undo?

Yes. Undo is unlimited here, and because FreeCell is a solvable puzzle, backing out of a line you have proven doesn’t work is a legitimate part of solving it rather than cheating.

FreeCell

FreeCell is the patience game with no luck in it. Every card is face up from the first second, which means the deal cannot beat you — only you can.

Drag a card or a valid run, or double-click to send a card home. The number of cards you can move at once depends on how many free cells and empty columns you have.

Players	1
Deck	One standard 52-card deck, all face up
Play time	6–15 minutes
Difficulty	Hard but fair — nearly every deal can be won

How to play FreeCell

Three areas, all visible from the start. The free cells are the four spaces top left, each holding exactly one card. The foundations are the four spaces top right. The tableau is the eight columns below, dealt seven cards each for the first four and six each for the last four.

Nothing is face down. The entire deck is in front of you before you make a single move, which is what makes FreeCell a puzzle rather than a gamble.

Legal moves

Build the tableau down in alternating colours — a red nine onto a black ten.
Build the foundations up by suit, ace to king. That is the goal.
Any single card can go into an empty free cell, and can come back out to a column or a foundation later.
Any card may be placed into an empty column, not only a king.

How many cards can you move at once?

Strictly speaking you can only ever move one card. Moving a run of them is a convenience the game performs for you, and the limit is what you could actually achieve by hand: the number of empty free cells plus empty columns, plus one. With two free cells open you can move three cards. With all four open, five. With three cells and four empty columns, eight.

This single number is the whole game. Every free cell you fill and every column you occupy shrinks how much you can move next turn.

Winning

Get all fifty-two cards onto the foundations. Once the free cells are empty and every column is a single ordered run, the win is guaranteed and the game finishes itself.

Strategy

FreeCell is famous for being solvable — of the original 32,000 numbered Microsoft deals, only one, #11982, has been proven impossible. That means a loss is always a mistake you made, and the mistakes are consistent ones.

Free cells are a debt, not a resource

Beginners park cards in the free cells to get them out of the way. That is exactly backwards. A card in a free cell is frozen — it blocks nothing and helps nothing until you can place it — and each one you fill reduces how many cards you can move for the rest of the game. Put a card in a cell only when you can see how it comes out again.

Hunt the aces before anything else

An ace buried under six cards is the thing most likely to lose you the game, because nothing can be sent home in that suit until it appears. In the opening survey, find all four aces and plan your first dozen moves around digging out the deepest one.

An empty column is worth more than an empty cell

Both add one to your move limit, but an empty column can hold an entire ordered run, not just a single card. Getting a column clear — and then resisting the urge to immediately fill it — is the strongest position in the game.

Plan the whole sequence before you touch a card

Because nothing is hidden, you can and should count the entire manoeuvre out first: which cards go where, which cells are needed, what state you will be in afterwards. Playing move by move and hoping is how solvable deals get lost. This is the habit that transfers to every other patience game.

Do not rush cards to the foundation

A four of clubs sent home early is a four of clubs no longer available to hold a red three in the tableau. Late in the game this matters enormously. Send cards up when they are useless to you, not just because they fit.

Variants

Baker’s Game — the direct ancestor, identical except that the tableau builds down in suit rather than alternating colours. Considerably harder.
Different cell counts — five or six free cells makes the game much easier and is a reasonable way to learn; two cells makes it brutal.
Eight Off — eight free cells, six cards per column, and only kings may fill an empty column.
Seahaven Towers — ten columns, four cells, building in suit, with a distinctly different feel.
Numbered deals — the Microsoft deals 1–32,000 are a shared reference set, which is why FreeCell has a competitive solving community at all.

Where FreeCell came from

FreeCell's ancestor is a game called Eight Off, described by Martin Gardner in his Scientific American mathematical games column in June 1968, where he credited a version to C. L. Baker — hence Baker's Game, the in-suit variant.

The modern form was written by Paul Alfille in 1978 on the PLATO computer system at the University of Illinois, where he changed the building rule to alternating colours and settled on four cells. That version circulated on PLATO for years before Jim Horne reimplemented it for Microsoft, which shipped it with Windows from the early 1990s and included the numbered 32,000-deal set. Those numbered deals turned FreeCell into something unusual among patience games: a puzzle with a shared, verifiable problem set, which a community of solvers then worked through systematically. Deal #11982 was eventually proven unsolvable, and it remains the standard answer to anyone who claims every FreeCell game can be won.

Questions people ask about FreeCell

Can every FreeCell deal be won?: Almost. Of Microsoft’s 32,000 numbered deals, exactly one — #11982 — has been proven impossible. For practical purposes you should assume any deal in front of you is winnable and that a loss means you made an error.
How many cards can I move at once?: The number of empty free cells plus empty columns, plus one. Four open cells lets you move five cards; three open cells and four empty columns lets you move eight. Moving a run is just a shortcut for what you could do one card at a time.
What can go into an empty column?: Any card, unlike Klondike where only a king qualifies. That flexibility is why an empty column is the most valuable asset in the game.
What are the free cells actually for?: Temporary storage for a single card each — usually to dig a needed card out from underneath something. They are not a dumping ground: every filled cell reduces how many cards you can move.
Why is FreeCell considered harder than Klondike?: Because you cannot blame the cards. Klondike hides half the deck, so losses are often unavoidable. FreeCell shows you everything, which means the difficulty is entirely in the planning — and there is no luck to rescue a bad plan.
Is it worth using undo?: Yes. Undo is unlimited here, and because FreeCell is a solvable puzzle, backing out of a line you have proven doesn’t work is a legitimate part of solving it rather than cheating.