Klondike Solitaire Strategy Guide
Klondike is the solitaire most people picture when they hear the word. It looks like a game of luck, but a surprising share of the result is decided by the order of your first few dozen moves. This guide covers how to open a deal, the mistakes that quietly lose games, a few advanced habits, and what is actually known about how often a deal can be won.
Opening principles
Klondike deals 28 cards into seven columns and leaves 24 in the stock. Only seven cards are face up, so your first job is information: find out what the other 21 tableau cards are. Almost every good opening follows from that.
- Look at everything before you touch anything. Scan all seven columns, the waste and the foundations. List every legal move, then pick the one that reveals the most.
- Flip face-down cards first. Between two otherwise equal moves, take the one that turns over a hidden card. When you can choose which column to dig into, choose the one with the most face-down cards, because that is where the most information is locked.
- Send Aces and 2s up at once. Low cards are rarely useful as tableau parents, and moving them frees the cards underneath.
- Keep options open. If two cards of the same rank and colour could both take a card, put it on the one whose removal will help you least later.
- Draw from the stock only when the tableau is dry. Each draw changes what you can see, so it should follow a full scan, not replace one.
Common mistakes
Most lost games are lost by habits, not by bad luck. These show up again and again.
- Rushing every card to the foundations. Ace and 2 are safe to send up early. A 5 or 6 is different: it is often more useful on the tableau, where it can host a card of the opposite colour. Send a card up when nothing needs to land on it.
- Emptying a column with no King in sight. Only a King can fill an empty column. A gap with no King available is wasted space.
- Putting a King into a gap without a plan. If two Kings are available, think about which colour you want at the base of a run. A black King wants a red Queen next, so check that the red Queens are not buried.
- Ignoring the waste pile. In Turn 3 especially, the cards you cycle past are information. If you did not note a buried Jack, you will not know that a column is waiting for it.
Turn 1 versus Turn 3
The two common variants differ only in how many cards you flip from the stock at a time, but they play like different games.
Turn 1 turns a single card, so every card in the stock eventually becomes playable and you can plan around the whole pile. It is relaxed, forgiving, and the best way to learn. The main skill is deciding whether a drawn card goes onto the tableau now or waits on the waste for a better moment.
Turn 3 flips three cards and lets you play only the top one. The two below stay locked until it is used, so a card you need can sit under one you cannot play. Winning in Turn 3 means playing from the waste in a way that unlocks the cards beneath it, and remembering what is buried in each cycle through the stock. Playing a waste card changes how the stock is grouped on the next pass, so choose which card to take with that in mind.
Advanced habits
- Think two moves ahead on colours. Before you place a red 6 on a black 7, check which black 7 you are using and whether the other one will be needed for a different red 6 later.
- Keep a mental ledger of hidden cards. Knowing that three of the four Queens are already visible tells you the last one is still buried.
- Use Undo to explore. Try a line to see what it uncovers, then back out if it was not useful. Exploring is how you learn what a good line looks like.
How often can a deal be won?
With a purely random shuffle, not every deal can be won. Some have no winning line at all, and with the face-down cards hidden you will lose some that did have one. Exact figures depend on the draw rule and on whether you assume perfect information.
Here is what we can state from our own solver runs. Solitaire Play uses a solver to prove deals winnable and builds its deal library only from those. Over our test deals, the solver proved 73.6% of Turn 1 deals and 68.4% of Turn 3 deals winnable. Those are lower bounds: a deal the solver could not prove within its search budget may still be winnable. They also assume every card is known, so a real player who cannot see the face-down cards will win less often than these figures suggest. That is the fun part of the game.
Practice and play
The best way to improve is to play deals where you know a winning line exists. Every new deal and every Daily Challenge on Solitaire Play comes from a library that a solver has already won, so a lost game is a missed line, not bad luck. Use Hint sparingly, and try the Solver from the menu after a game to see where it would have gone another way.