Klondike Solitaire: Rules, Setup, and How to Play

Klondike is the single-deck solitaire game most people mean when they say "solitaire." You win by moving all 52 cards onto four foundations, built up by suit from Ace to King. It uses one deck, seven tableau columns, and a stock you draw from — which is what separates it from Spider (two decks, ten columns) and FreeCell (one deck, all cards face-up, no stock).

What Klondike Is (and What It Isn't)

Klondike is a one-deck game. That single fact drives most of its rules and its difficulty.

If you're looking at a game with eight columns and every card visible from the start, that's FreeCell, not Klondike. If it has ten columns and two decks, that's Spider.

Setup

Deal seven tableau columns from left to right. Column 1 gets one card, column 2 gets two, and so on up to column 7 with seven cards. Only the top card of each column is face-up; the rest are face-down.

The remaining 24 cards form the stock (also called the hand or talon), placed face-down.

You also need four foundation piles, one per suit, and one waste pile. In most implementations these start empty and sit above or beside the tableau.

The Four Piles and What Each Does

• Tableau (7 columns): The main play area. Build columns downward in descending order, alternating colors — a red 7 goes on a black 8, a black 6 goes on a red 7.
• Foundations (4 piles): Build each suit upward from Ace to King. Aces go here first; a 2 of the same suit goes on the Ace, and so on.
• Stock: The face-down draw pile. Turn cards from here when you have no useful tableau moves.
• Waste: Where cards from the stock land face-up. Only the top waste card is available to play.

Turn-by-Turn Rules

On each turn you may:

1. Move a face-up tableau card onto another tableau card that is one rank higher and the opposite color.
2. Move a run of cards in descending alternating-color sequence as a unit, provided the run is already correctly ordered.
3. Move any Ace to an empty foundation, then build up by suit.
4. Move a King (or a run starting with a King) to an empty tableau column.
5. Turn over the top card of the stock. If it can't be played, it goes to the waste.
6. Play the top waste card onto the tableau or a foundation.

When you move a card off a tableau column and expose a face-down card, flip it face-up. That flip is often the whole point of a move — it's how you unlock the game.

Draw-One vs. Draw-Three

This is the single biggest difficulty setting in Klondike.

• Draw-one: You turn one card at a time from the stock to the waste. Every card becomes available eventually, so games are far more winnable.
• Draw-three: You turn three cards at a time. Only the top card of each group of three is playable, so some cards get buried. Win rates drop sharply.

Many versions let you redeal the waste back into the stock a limited number of times, or not at all. Fewer redeals means a harder game. Check your version's settings before assuming a loss is final.

Practical Tips

• Prioritize flipping face-down cards. A move that exposes a hidden card usually beats a move that just tidies the tableau.
• Don't rush Aces and 2s to the foundations. Early on, low cards in the tableau can be useful building targets. Moving them up too fast can strand higher cards.
• Empty columns are for Kings — but also for flexibility. Sometimes it's worth holding an empty column to park a long run rather than dumping a King into it.
• Watch the waste pile order in draw-three. You can only reach the top card, so plan around what's buried.
• Play the stock when the tableau stalls. If no tableau move helps, drawing is free information.

Winning and Losing

You win when all four foundations hold Ace through King of their suit — all 52 cards.

You're stuck when no tableau move is legal, the stock and waste offer nothing playable, and no redeals remain. At that point the game is over. In draw-one with unlimited redeals, you can usually keep cycling, but a genuine dead end still exists when the remaining cards can't be ordered.

Where to Play

SolSuite Solitaire is a collection of more than 800 solitaire games, including Klondike alongside Spider, FreeCell, and other classic variants, and it runs on Windows 10 and Windows 11. If you want Klondike specifically, confirm the variant is included in whatever collection you choose rather than assuming every solitaire package ships the standard one-deck game.