As a solitaire game, this is a type of patience game traditionally played alone. You aim to sort a deck of cards using attention, strategy, and memory.
Klondike Solitaire uses one deck of 52 French-suited playing cards. The suits are Spades, Clubs, Hearts, and Diamonds. All 13 ranks – King, Queen, Jack, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, Ace – appear once in each suit.
You can take in all Solitaire rules in detail in our Solitaire School featuring our Solitaire Manual, Solitaire Lessons, and more. That being said, let’s continue with a brief overview here.
To set up the game, shuffle the deck and arrange 28 cards in the tableau: The first of seven piles in the middle of the table contains one card. The other six piles each contain one more card than the previous pile. Each tableau pile’s top card is revealed.
The remaining cards become the face-down stock; you can reveal one card at a time from it when you need help.
And finally, there are four empty spaces above the tableau that we call the foundation, bringing us to the game’s objective: In Klondike Solitaire, you want all cards to end up in four piles in the foundation, each in one suit only.
You can only move individual cards from the tableau to the foundation. These cards must be revealed and fit the next required rank in the foundation pile. Each foundation pile starts with an Ace and continues 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, Jack, Queen, leaving the King on top.
That means that you must reveal all cards throughout the game: Sort the sequences in the tableau from King to Ace by moving revealed cards from one tableau pile to the other, revealing the new top card of the first pile. And you will need to add all cards from the stock to the tableau in the process or directly to the foundation when possible.
Beware, sometimes, a round simply cannot be solved. Then, you can give up the game at any time. The points gained until giving up will make up your score for that round.
At the Solitaire Palace, we offer an exclusive multiplayer mode. You aim to solve the same card setup quicker and more effectively than your fellow players. More effective approaches gain more points. A round ends shortly after one player moves all cards to the foundation, when no player can make any more moves or when the time is up. After several rounds at a table, the player with the highest total score wins!
PS: If you enjoy playing the solitaire variant Easthaven, our Easthaven custom rule at the Solitaire Palace makes it available to you!
