FreeCell Solitaire with all 52 cards face up, four free cells and undo. Plan your moves, then let Auto-finish play the last cards.
What is FreeCell?
FreeCell is a solitaire card game played with one 52-card deck in which every card is dealt face up, and you use four free cells as temporary storage to move all the cards to the foundations by suit, from Ace to King. Nothing is hidden, so the game is almost pure planning: if you lose a deal, there was usually a better sequence of moves.
Nearly every FreeCell deal can be won. That makes it a favourite for players who like to think several moves ahead and dislike losing to the luck of the draw.
How to play FreeCell
Setup: all 52 cards are dealt face up into eight columns. The first four columns get seven cards and the last four get six. Above the columns are four free cells on the left and four foundations on the right.
Columns: build down in alternating colours, a red 9 on a black 10, a black 4 on a red 5. An empty column takes any card of any rank. In Klondike only a King may fill one, and this difference makes empty columns very powerful in FreeCell.
Free cells: each free cell holds exactly one card. Any top card can go into an empty free cell, and a card in a free cell can move back onto a column or up to a foundation at any time.
Foundations: each one starts with an Ace and builds up by suit to the King. A card can also be brought back down from a foundation onto a column when it fits the colour rule. You win when all 52 cards are on the foundations.
Moving several cards: officially you move one card at a time, but the game lets you move a whole run in one go as long as there would be enough free cells and empty columns to do it card by card. The limit is (1 + empty free cells) x 2 to the power of the number of empty columns. If you move the run into an empty column, that column does not count.
FreeCell strategy and supermove math
Learn the supermove limit, because it decides what you can do. With four empty free cells and no empty column you can move a run of 5 cards. With two free cells and one empty column: (1 + 2) x 2 = 6 cards, or 3 if the run is going into that empty column. With four free cells and two empty columns: 5 x 4 = 20 cards. Every card you park in a free cell lowers the limit, and every empty column doubles it.
An empty column is worth more than a free cell. Clearing a short column early pays off for the rest of the deal. Do not drop a single card into an empty column just because you can; use it for a long run, or for a King, which never needs to move again.
Find the Aces and 2s before your first move. Look at where each low card is buried and how many cards sit on top of it. Start with the column where the low cards are closest to the top, and avoid burying them further by stacking onto that column.
Keep free cells empty. A full set of free cells is how most deals are lost. Before putting a card in a cell, know how and when it will come out. Filling the last free cell is only worth it when it leads straight to a foundation move or an empty column.
Plan the whole sequence. Because every card is visible, you can work out five or six moves in advance. If a plan needs one more free cell than you have, look for a different order: often moving a card to a foundation first, or building a run on another column, opens the space you need. Undo is unlimited, so testing a plan costs nothing.
FreeCell variants
Our FreeCell uses the standard rules: four free cells, eight columns, and any card allowed in an empty column. There are no options to change.
Other variants exist. Baker's Game uses the same layout but builds the columns by suit, which is much harder. Versions with fewer free cells also exist, and every cell you remove makes the game noticeably tougher. Eight Off and Seahaven Towers are related games that build by suit, with their own number of cells and columns.
Where FreeCell comes from
FreeCell grew out of Baker's Game, an older patience with the same layout that builds by suit. Paul Alfille wrote the first computer version, under the name FreeCell, in 1978 on the PLATO educational computer system.
The game reached a wide audience when it came with personal computers in the 1990s. Its numbered set of 32,000 deals became a puzzle community of its own, and it is known that only one of those deals, number 11982, cannot be solved.
Playing FreeCell on Hevagames
FreeCell on Hevagames plays in the browser on phones, tablets and computers, with nothing to install. Drag a card or a run, or tap a card and then the place it should go. A double tap sends a card to the best spot, trying the foundations first, then columns, then a free cell. The game checks the supermove limit for you, so a run you cannot legally move simply will not pick up. On a keyboard, arrows and Enter move cards, Z undoes and N deals a new game.
When every column is in descending order, an Auto-finish button appears and moves the remaining cards to the foundations. Undo is unlimited and the game saves itself, so you can leave a deal and come back to it. Scoring is 10 points per card on a foundation, and a win adds a bonus of 1000 points minus 2 per move and half a point per second. Undo counts as a move. Your best score stays on your device. The table scales to portrait and landscape screens and follows the light or dark theme.
How to play
- 1Move all 52 cards to the four foundations, by suit from Ace to King.
- 2In the columns, stack cards down in alternating colors. Any card can go into an empty column.
- 3Each free cell holds one card while you dig for the card you need.
- 4You can move several cards at once if there are enough free cells and empty columns to do it one card at a time.
- 5When every column runs from high to low, tap Auto-finish.
Controls
Tips
- Free the Aces and Twos first.
- Keep free cells empty for as long as you can; each one used makes long moves shorter.
- An empty column doubles how many cards you can move at once.
