Can every game of Klondike Solitaire be won?

No. Because twenty-one cards begin face down, some deals are impossible regardless of how well you play. Studies of the draw-three game put the proportion of winnable deals at roughly 80 per cent in theory, but far fewer are won in practice because you cannot see what you are working with.

What is the difference between draw one and draw three?

Draw one turns a single stock card at a time, so every card in the stock is reachable. Draw three turns them in groups, meaning only every third card is immediately available and the order shifts as you play. Draw three is significantly harder.

Can I move more than one card at a time?

Yes, provided they form a valid sequence — descending and alternating in colour. You can move a red 6, black 5, red 4 together onto a black 7. The run must already be correctly ordered.

What can go into an empty column?

Only a king, either from the tableau or the waste. This is why emptying a column is not automatically progress: without a king available, the space does nothing for you.

Should I always move a card to the foundation when I can?

No, and this is the most common mistake in the game. Aces and twos should always go up. Middle cards are often more useful in the tableau, where they give other cards somewhere to land. Sending them home early can lock the game.

Can I take a card back off the foundation?

In this version, yes. It is a genuine tactical option when a foundation card is the only thing that will let you continue in the tableau. Some traditional rule sets forbid it.

Klondike Solitaire

This is the game people mean when they say solitaire. It is also the one whose rules are most often half-remembered, and the one where the most common mistake is playing a card simply because you can.

Drag a card or an ordered run, or double-click a card to send it home. Undo is unlimited; switch between draw one and draw three in the toolbar.

Players	1
Deck	One standard 52-card deck
Play time	5–12 minutes
Difficulty	Moderate — and roughly a third of deals are unwinnable

How to play Klondike Solitaire

The board has four distinct areas. The tableau is the seven columns across the main table. The foundations are the four spaces you are trying to fill. The stock is the face-down pile you draw from, and the waste is the face-up pile beside it.

The deal

Columns are dealt one card, two cards, three, and so on up to seven — twenty-eight cards in all. Only the last card of each column is turned face up; everything beneath it is face down and unknown. The remaining twenty-four cards form the stock.

Legal moves

You are building two things in opposite directions at once. The foundations go up by suit, ace through king, and that is where every card must eventually end up. The tableau columns are built down in alternating colours — a red six onto a black seven, a black five onto that red six.

Click the stock to turn cards to the waste, one or three at a time depending on the setting. The top waste card can be played to a foundation or a column.
Move a face-up card, or an ordered run of them, onto a column whose top card is one rank higher and the other colour.
Uncovering a face-down card flips it over. This is the only way the hidden half of the deck reveals itself.
An empty column can only be filled by a king.
You may pull a card back off a foundation if the tableau needs it. Not every version allows this; this one does.

Winning

Fill all four foundations from ace to king. Once every card is face up and the stock is exhausted the outcome is already decided, so the game finishes the deal for you.

Strategy

Klondike is a game of information. Twenty-one cards start face down, and almost every good decision is about turning them over sooner.

Always prefer the move that flips a face-down card

Given a choice between two legal moves, take the one that exposes a hidden card. Every flipped card widens your options for the rest of the game; every move that only shuffles known cards around leaves you exactly as blind as you were.

Work on the longest columns first

Column seven has six cards buried under it, column two has one. The long columns are where the game is won, because the cards you need are statistically more likely to be down there — and clearing a short column early gains you a space you probably cannot use yet.

Do not send aces and twos home reflexively — send everything else

Aces and twos should go to the foundation the moment they appear; they can never be useful in the tableau. Higher cards are different. A red six sitting on a black seven is doing work: it gives a black five somewhere to go. Sending it to the foundation too early can strand cards you needed to place, which is the single most common way a winnable deal is thrown away.

Do not empty a column without a king ready

An empty column is worthless until a king can occupy it, and clearing one prematurely wastes the space and often buries a card you have just spent several moves uncovering. Check what king is available — or plausibly coming — before you commit.

Draw three changes the arithmetic, not the strategy

In the draw-three game only every third card is immediately playable, and playing one shifts which cards you can reach on the next pass. This means you should sometimes decline a playable waste card to keep the sequence favourable. It is the one situation in Klondike where doing nothing is a real move.

Variants

Draw one and draw three — the core division. Draw one is considerably more winnable; draw three is the traditional casino-influenced form and much harder.
Vegas scoring — you notionally buy the deck for $52 and earn $5 per card sent to a foundation, so the aim shifts from winning the deal to extracting the most cards from it.
Thoughtful Klondike — every card is dealt face up, turning the game into a pure solvable puzzle. Used in research precisely because it removes the luck.
Double Klondike — two decks, nine columns, eight foundations. Longer and rather more forgiving.
Limited passes — some versions allow only one or three passes through the stock rather than unlimited redeals.

Where Klondike came from

Patience games appear in print surprisingly late. The earliest known collections are German and Scandinavian and date from the 1780s onwards, and the first substantial English-language books arrive in the 1870s — Lady Adelaide Cadogan's Illustrated Games of Patience being the best known. Klondike itself is not in those early collections under that name.

The name points at the Klondike Gold Rush of 1896–99, and the game is generally assumed to have been named after or popularised among the prospectors of the Yukon, though as David Parlett notes in his history of card games, the documentary trail is thin and the story may be retrofitted. What is certain is what happened next: Microsoft bundled a Klondike implementation with Windows 3.0 in 1990, initially as a way of teaching people to use a mouse. It became one of the most-used pieces of software ever written, and it is the reason this particular patience variant, rather than any of the several hundred others, is what the word "solitaire" now means.

Questions people ask about Klondike Solitaire

Can every game of Klondike Solitaire be won?: No. Because twenty-one cards begin face down, some deals are impossible regardless of how well you play. Studies of the draw-three game put the proportion of winnable deals at roughly 80 per cent in theory, but far fewer are won in practice because you cannot see what you are working with.
What is the difference between draw one and draw three?: Draw one turns a single stock card at a time, so every card in the stock is reachable. Draw three turns them in groups, meaning only every third card is immediately available and the order shifts as you play. Draw three is significantly harder.
Can I move more than one card at a time?: Yes, provided they form a valid sequence — descending and alternating in colour. You can move a red 6, black 5, red 4 together onto a black 7. The run must already be correctly ordered.
What can go into an empty column?: Only a king, either from the tableau or the waste. This is why emptying a column is not automatically progress: without a king available, the space does nothing for you.
Should I always move a card to the foundation when I can?: No, and this is the most common mistake in the game. Aces and twos should always go up. Middle cards are often more useful in the tableau, where they give other cards somewhere to land. Sending them home early can lock the game.
Can I take a card back off the foundation?: In this version, yes. It is a genuine tactical option when a foundation card is the only thing that will let you continue in the tableau. Some traditional rule sets forbid it.