About Klondike NZ

About klondike.nz

klondike.nz is a New Zealand home for Klondike, the solitaire most of us simply call patience: seven columns, a stock pile, and four foundations to build from Ace to King. It is the game that came free with the family computer, the one people play on the ferry or in the queue at the doctor's, and the one that still catches you with "just one more deal" at eleven at night. We built this site so you can play it properly, for free, without anything getting in the way.

klondike.nz is run by Forty Media. You can reach us at info@klondike.nz.

Klondike first, and eleven more

The home page deals Klondike turning one card at a time. If you prefer the classic challenge, Solitaire Turn 3 turns three. Once you know Klondike well, its relatives are easy to pick up, so we have included the eleven games that grew out of the same family or sit naturally beside it:

• Yukon and Alaska. Klondike's layout with no stock pile and far more freedom to move cards.
• FreeCell and Baker's Solitaire, every card face up, all skill and no luck of the draw.
• Spider in one, two and four suits, two decks and long runs.
• Diplomat, Golf and Pyramid, for a change of pace.

Every game is free, runs in any modern browser on a computer, tablet or phone, and needs no download, account or email address. The cards are large and clear, there is a zoom control, and you get a Hint button, unlimited Undo, Restart and Auto Play to finish a game once it's won.

What we have learned about Klondike

We wanted to answer the question every Klondike player asks sooner or later: was that deal even winnable? So in September 2026 our team wrote simulations in Python that play the game by this site's own rules, and ran them over thousands of numbered deals.

A simple computer player that sees only what you see, and never uses Undo, won 42.3% of 10,000 deals turning one card, and 10.6% turning three. A solver that is allowed to see every hidden card proved at least 76.6% of deals winnable at Turn 1. Real players do about as well as our simple bot: on solitairex.io, 44.8% of 913,106 Klondike games were won in the month before 16 July 2025. The gap between "winnable" and "won" is where good play lives, and it is what our strategy pages are about.

Our numbers line up with the peer-reviewed study by Blake and Gent in the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research (2026), which puts the share of Turn 1 deals that can be won with perfect knowledge at 90.48%. Each game page explains, step by step, how the testing was done and where its limits are.

How this site is written

We used an AI assistant, Claude, made by Anthropic, to help write and review the simulation code and to draft pages. The AI did not produce any figures: every number comes from running the code, and the team checked the results against published research before publishing. Pages go out under the byline Admin on behalf of the klondike.nz team.

• Rules are described as they work on this site, not as some other version plays them.
• Every statistic comes with how it was measured, and ranges are given where a single number would overstate what we know.
• Published figures are quoted only with a link to the source.
• If you spot a mistake, tell us and we'll check it and correct the page.

Say kia ora

Suggestions, corrections, or a deal you're convinced was impossible: email info@klondike.nz. Our privacy page explains what the site stores on your device, and the terms cover the rules for using it.