Solitaire rules: how to play Klondike

What you need

One standard deck of 52 cards, without jokers, and room on the table for 13 piles. On a phone or a computer the cards are dealt for you.

The layout

• The tableau: seven columns. The first column gets one card, the second two, and so on up to seven cards in the seventh, 28 cards in all. Only the top card of each column is face up; the others lie face down under it.
• The stock: the 24 cards left over, face down. You draw from it.
• The waste: the pile where cards from the stock are turned face up. Only its top card can be played.
• The foundations: four empty spaces, one for each suit. Each is built up from ace to king.

The goal

Move all 52 cards to the four foundations, each suit in order: ace, 2, 3 and so on up to king.

Legal moves

1. 1.Build down in the tableau in alternating colours. A red 7 can go on a black 8, and a black 7 on a red 8. In the tableau the suit does not matter, only the colour and the rank.
2. 2.Move a run. Any face-up card can be moved together with all the cards lying on it, as long as they already go down in alternating colours. The bottom card of the run must fit where it lands.
3. 3.Fill an empty column with a king only: a single king, or a run that starts with a king.
4. 4.Turn over face-down cards. When the last face-up card leaves a column, the face-down card under it is turned face up.
5. 5.Play to the foundations. An ace starts a foundation. After that, only the next card of the same suit fits: the 2 of hearts on the ace of hearts, then the 3 of hearts. Cards go up one at a time, from the top of the waste or the top of a column.
6. 6.Draw from the stock. Turn cards from the stock onto the waste, one or three at a time (see below). The top card of the waste can be played to the tableau or to a foundation.
7. 7.Take a card back from a foundation. Most versions let you move the top card of a foundation back onto the tableau if it fits there. It is rarely needed, but sometimes it is the only way to make room for a lower card.

Draw 1 and draw 3

In draw 1 you turn one card at a time from the stock, so every card in the stock becomes playable in turn.

In draw 3 you turn three cards at a time and only the top one of the three can be played. The two under it become available only when the card above them has been played. Which cards you can reach depends on the order of the stock, and every card you take from the waste shifts which cards come up on the next pass. That makes draw 3 much harder than draw 1.

Going through the deck again

When the stock is empty, you turn the whole waste over, without shuffling it, and it becomes the new stock. How many times you may do this is where the rule sets differ most:

• Unlimited passes, in both draw 1 and draw 3. This is common in computer versions.
• One pass in draw 1 and three passes in draw 3. This is the strict rule, and the one Vegas scoring uses.
• Some card-table versions allow a fixed number of passes, often three, whatever you draw.

Winning and losing

You win when all 52 cards are on the foundations. Once the stock and the waste are empty and every card in the tableau is face up, the game is won in practice: every card can go home in order, and most apps offer to finish for you.

You lose when no move is left that changes anything. Not every deal of Klondike can be won, even with perfect play, and some deals cannot be won from the first card. That is part of the game, not a mistake in the deal.

Scoring

Points are not part of the card game itself; they came with computer solitaire. Most computer versions use a standard table close to this one:

Moves from one column to another score nothing. Many versions add a bonus for finishing quickly, and some take points off as time passes. The exact numbers vary between apps.

Common variants

• Vegas scoring. You pay 52 units for the deck and get 5 units back for every card you move to a foundation, so you need more than ten cards home to come out ahead. Draw 1 allows one pass through the stock, draw 3 three passes. In cumulative Vegas the balance carries over from deal to deal.
• Winnable deals. Some apps only deal games that a computer has solved first.
• Thoughtful solitaire. All cards are dealt face up, so you can plan the whole game.
• Any card to an empty column. A common house rule, but it makes the game much easier. The standard rule is king only.

Tips

• Turn over face-down cards first. A move that uncovers a card, especially in a column with many hidden cards, is almost always worth more than one that does not.
• Do not empty a column until you have a king to put in it. An empty column is only useful for a king.
• Choose the king with care. If you have a red queen ready, move a black king into the empty column, and the other way round.
• Do not rush cards to the foundations. Aces and 2s are always safe to play, but a 5 or 6 may still be needed in the tableau to hold a card of the other colour.
• Make the moves you can in the tableau before you draw. In draw 3, think about how taking a card off the waste changes which cards turn up on the next pass.

Playing in Solitaire

Solitaire is EU Studio's Klondike for iPhone and iPad. It follows the rules above, and this is what it does exactly:

• Draw: Draw 1 or Draw 3, under Settings. Draw 1 is the default, and a change applies from the next deal.
• Passes: unlimited in both modes. Tap the empty stock to turn the waste over.
• Empty columns take a king only, and you may move a card back from a foundation.
• Points follow the table above. In draw 3 the first two turn-overs of the waste are free, then each one costs 20. The score never goes below zero.
• Time bonus: only on a win, 700,000 divided by the seconds you took. A four-minute win adds 2,916 points. 30 seconds or less pays the most, 23,333; after ten minutes there is no bonus.
• Undo is unlimited and puts the score back exactly as it was. The move counter keeps counting the moves you took back.
• Hints: three per game. When they are used up you can watch an ad for three more; with Premium they are unlimited. A hint shows which cards to move and where, or points at the stock when there is nothing better to do. It never suggests taking a card off a foundation.
• Tap a card and it goes to its best place; if there is none, it is selected and you tap where it should go. You can also drag.
• Auto Complete, on by default: once the stock and the waste are empty and every card is face up, a Finish button sends all the cards home.
• Winnable Deals Only, off by default: each new deal is checked by a solver before you get it. If no deal can be proven winnable in 40 tries, you get an ordinary one.
• This Game Can't Be Won: after you stop moving, the solver checks the position. If it can prove that no sequence of moves can finish the deal from there, the app says so and offers New Game, Undo or Keep Playing. Early in a deal the search is usually too large to prove anything, so the message comes late in a game, and never from a guess.
• Daily Challenge: one deal a day, the same for everyone, changing at your local midnight. It is played in the draw mode you have chosen and is not checked for winnability.
• Restart This Deal plays the same shuffle again from the start.
• Game Center leaderboards: games won, high score with the time bonus, fastest win, fewest moves and the longest run of days with a win.