Klondike solitaire - the game most people simply call 'solitaire' - is played with a standard 52-card deck dealt into seven tableau piles, with the goal of building all four suits up from Ace to King on four foundation piles. The rules are simple once you see the layout, but a few precise details around which cards can move where trip up almost every beginner.
The Layout: Tableau, Foundations, Stock and Waste
A game of Klondike starts with four areas. The tableau is seven piles across the main play area, dealt with 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 cards respectively - only the top card of each pile starts face up, everything under it is face down. The four foundations are empty piles, usually shown along the top, one per suit, where you build each suit up from Ace to King to win. The remaining cards form the stock, a face-down pile you draw from, and each card you draw goes onto the waste pile next to it, available to play.
The Core Rules
Once the layout is set, three rules govern almost every move:
- Tableau piles build downward and alternate colors - a red 9 can hold a black 8, a black 8 can hold a red 7, and so on
- Only a King (or a stack starting with a King) can be moved onto an empty tableau column - no other rank may start a new pile there
- Foundation piles build upward within a single suit, starting from the Ace and ending at the King
Any face-up card, or a properly ordered run of face-up cards, can be moved as a group as long as the move follows the alternating-color rule at its destination. Whenever a face-down card becomes the new top card of its pile, it's automatically turned face up.
Draw-1 vs. Draw-3
Klondike is usually played in one of two draw modes. In Draw-1, you turn over one card from the stock at a time, and every card you draw is immediately available to play - this version is far more solvable and is the friendlier choice for beginners. In Draw-3, you turn over three cards at once, but only the top of those three is playable until it's moved or you cycle back around, which buries the two cards beneath it until you pass through the deck again. Draw-3 is considered the more traditional, harder version, and some cards can become effectively unreachable for a long stretch of the game.
Strategy: What to Prioritize Early
The single most valuable move type in the early game is anything that flips a face-down tableau card, since every hidden card is a piece of information (and a potential move) you don't have yet - prioritize this over almost anything else, including moving cards to the foundations. Sending aces and low cards up to the foundations feels productive, but doing it too eagerly can strand a card you needed lower down in the tableau to keep unstacking columns. A useful habit is to only empty a tableau column once you actually have a King ready to move into it - an empty column with no King on hand is often just wasted space until one appears.
Common Beginner Mistakes
- Sending cards to the foundation the moment they're playable, instead of asking whether they're still useful in the tableau
- Emptying a column without a King ready, leaving it stuck open for the rest of the game
- Cycling through the stock repeatedly without a plan, hoping to get lucky rather than tracking which cards are still buried
- Ignoring the waste pile - the card sitting there is just as playable as anything in the tableau
When You're Truly Stuck
Not every Klondike deal can be won - depending on the shuffle, some deals are mathematically unsolvable no matter how well you play, and this is a normal, well-known feature of the game rather than a sign you made a mistake. Before giving up on a deal, check whether you've actually cycled through the entire stock at least once and whether every currently movable card has been tried in every legal destination; a surprising number of stuck games have one overlooked move hiding in a face-up tableau card. If you genuinely have no legal moves left and the stock is exhausted, the deal is lost - that's simply part of the odds in solitaire, not a rule you're missing.