Classic Klondike Solitaire in your browser: draw one or three cards, unlimited passes through the stock, undo, a timer and a score.
What is Klondike Solitaire?
Klondike Solitaire is a one-player card game played with a standard 52-card deck, where the goal is to move every card onto four foundation piles, one per suit, from Ace up to King. It is the game most people mean when they say solitaire or patience, and it is the version with seven columns, a stock pile in the corner and a mix of face-up and face-down cards.
Part of the layout starts hidden, so some deals cannot be won however well you play. Careful play wins a much larger share of the rest.
How to play Klondike Solitaire
Setup: the table has 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 last card of each column is face up, which leaves 21 cards face down. The remaining 24 cards form the stock. Next to it is the waste pile, and the four empty foundation spaces sit along the top.
Moves in the columns: you build down in alternating colours. A black 8 goes on a red 9, a red 4 goes on a black 5. You can move one card, or a whole face-up run that already follows the pattern, so a red 9, black 8 and red 7 move together. When you move the last face-up card off a column, the face-down card under it turns over by itself. An empty column takes only a King, or a run that starts with a King.
The stock: tap it to turn cards onto the waste. In Draw 1 mode one card comes over at a time. In Draw 3 mode three cards come over and only the top one can be played. When the stock is empty, tap its spot to turn the waste back into a new stock and go through it again. Our version allows unlimited passes in both modes.
Foundations and winning: each foundation starts with an Ace and grows by suit up to King. A card can also come back down from a foundation onto a column if it fits the colour rule. You win when all 52 cards sit on the foundations. Once the stock and waste are empty and every card on the table is face up, an Auto-finish button appears and plays the rest for you.
Klondike Solitaire strategy
Turn over hidden cards first. The 21 face-down cards are what stops most deals. When two moves are possible, prefer the one that turns a card face up, and start with the columns that hide the most cards. The seventh column has six cards face down, and many lost games end with a few of them still buried there.
Do not empty a column unless you have a King ready to move into it. An empty column that nothing can use is wasted. When you can choose between a red and a black King, check which Queens are waiting: a black Queen needs a red King. Pick the King that lets the next cards follow.
Be patient with the foundations. Aces and 2s can always go up at once. Higher cards may still be needed as places to build in the columns. A reliable rule: a card is safe to play up when both cards of the opposite colour one rank lower are already on the foundations. A red 6 is safe once both black 5s are up, since no card would ever need to sit on it.
Use the columns before the stock. A column move can expose a new card, while a stock card only adds one more card to look at. In Draw 3, playing a card from the waste shifts which cards turn up on the next pass, which can bring a buried card within reach.
Move runs for a reason: to uncover a face-down card, to free a column for a King, or to let a card reach a foundation. Undo is unlimited, so when two lines look equal, try one and step back if it goes nowhere.
Draw 1, Draw 3 and other Klondike rules
Our Klondike has one option in the menu: draw one card or three cards from the stock. Draw 1 shows every stock card on every pass and wins far more deals. Draw 3 is the harder classic: you can reach only every third card, and the order changes only when you play from the waste. Changing the option starts a new deal.
Other rule sets exist. Some versions limit the passes through the stock, and Vegas-style scoring charges for the deck and pays per card on a foundation. Our version keeps passes unlimited and uses its own scoring, described below. For the same build-down-in-colours idea with no hidden cards, try FreeCell; Spider uses two decks and builds by suit.
Where Klondike comes from
The name is usually traced to the Klondike Gold Rush in the Yukon at the end of the 1890s, though who first played the game under that name is not recorded. Card games for one player were already popular in the nineteenth century under the general name patience.
Klondike became the best-known solitaire in the world once it came preinstalled on personal computers in the early 1990s.
Playing Klondike Solitaire on Hevagames
Our Klondike runs in the browser on phones, tablets and desktops, with nothing to download. You can drag cards, 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. On a keyboard, the arrow keys move between piles, Enter picks up and places, Esc cancels, Z undoes, D draws from the stock and N deals a new game.
Undo has no limit, and the last 60 steps survive a page reload, so a half-played deal is still there when you return. The top bar shows moves, time and score. You get 10 points for each card on a foundation and 5 points for each face-down card you turn over. A win adds a bonus of 1000 points minus 2 per move and half a point per second, never below zero. Undo counts as a move. Your best score is kept on your device.
The cards are drawn in code, so they stay sharp at any size, the table rescales for portrait and landscape screens, and the game follows the light or dark theme.
How to play
- 1Build four foundations by suit, from Ace up to King.
- 2In the seven columns, stack cards down in alternating colors. Only a King can go into an empty column.
- 3Tap the stock to turn cards. When it runs out, tap again to turn the waste back over; there is no limit.
- 4Pick draw 1 or draw 3 in the Menu; the choice applies to the next deal.
- 5Once every card is face up and the stock and waste are empty, tap Auto-finish.
Controls
Tips
- Turn over face-down cards before playing from the waste when you can.
- Keep a King ready before you empty a column.
- Do not rush cards to the foundations if you still need them to hold lower cards in the columns.
