Easthaven Solitaire: a short, open deal with a stock that feeds every column
Easthaven looks like a shallow Klondike: seven columns of three cards, with only the top card of each face up. The difference is the stock. Instead of turning cards onto a waste pile, each click deals one fresh card onto every column at once. There is no waste, and no second pass.
That sounds strict, but on this site's rules Easthaven turned out to be one of the most winnable games we tested. A solver that could see every card found a win in 97.6% of 3,000 deals, proved none impossible, and left the other 2.4% unfinished. That is a ceiling, not a promise: you cannot see the hidden cards. Still, it means a lost game of Easthaven is far more often a matter of play than of the deal.
The Easthaven deal, measured
| What we measured | Result | Deals | How |
|---|---|---|---|
| No move at all among the 7 face-up cards at the start | 8.2% (95% range 7.2–9.2%) | 3,000 | Deal inspection |
| Aces starting face down (of 4) | 1.06 on average | 3,000 | Deal inspection |
| Solved by a solver that sees every card | 97.6% (97.0–98.1%) | 3,000 | Depth-first solver, 100,000-position limit: a ceiling |
| Proven impossible | 0 deals (0–0.13%) | 3,000 | Same solver |
| Unfinished when the limit was reached | 2.4% | 3,000 | Same solver |
Easthaven rules on klondike.nz
The layout
- One standard pack of 52 cards.
- Seven tableau columns of three cards each. Only the top card of each column is face up: 7 visible, 14 hidden.
- The other 31 cards form the stock. There is no waste pile.
- Four foundations, built up in suit from Ace to King.
Moves
- Cards are built down in alternating colours, as in Klondike.
- A run of correctly built cards can be moved together as a unit.
- Any card, not just a King, may go into an empty column.
- Clicking the stock deals one card face up onto each of the seven columns. The last deal only has three cards left, so it covers just three columns.
- You may deal from the stock even when a column is empty.
- There is no redeal: once the 31 stock cards are out, the tableau is all you have.
Reading the opening
A frozen start is common, and not fatal
In 8.2% of our deals, none of the seven face-up cards could move anywhere. In Easthaven that is less of a problem than it looks: one click of the stock lays seven new cards across the table, and the solver still found wins in almost every deal.
About one Ace is hidden
With only two hidden cards under each top card, the average deal hides just over one Ace (1.06). Note which columns might hold it and work on those first.
Columns are short, so spaces come quickly
Three cards per column means you can often empty one within a few moves. Because any card may fill a space here, an empty column is a flexible parking spot, not a King-only slot.
Strategy
Clear before you deal
Every stock deal covers every column with a new card. Before you click, do everything useful you can: turn over hidden cards, build runs, send cards home. Anything you leave undone will be buried one card deeper.
Use run moves
This site lets you move a whole alternating-colour run in one go, and our figures show that rule is decisive. When we forced the solver to move only one card at a time, it proved 42.3% of 300 deals impossible; with run moves allowed, it proved none. So use runs freely to reorganise the table.
Keep an empty column for the right moment
An empty column is most valuable just before a stock deal, when you can use it to rescue a card that the deal would otherwise bury.
Mind the last deal
The final stock deal only covers three columns. Plan so that the columns you most need to keep clear are among the four it misses.
A note on the published research
East Haven is one of the games in the 2026 study by Charlie Blake and Ian Gent at the University of St Andrews (Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research). Their version only allows one card to be moved at a time, which is stricter than this site, so their figure (82.844% winnable with every card known) is not directly comparable with our 97.6%. When we ran our own one-card-at-a-time version, our result did not match theirs either, and we have not yet found out why. We therefore quote only the result for the rules you actually play here.
A routine for each stock deal
Easthaven falls into a rhythm: work the table, deal, work the table again. Before each click of the stock, run through three checks. Can any card go home? Is there a move that turns over a hidden card? Is there a run that could sit more usefully somewhere else? Only when the answer to all three is no is it time to deal. After the deal, start again from the first check, because seven new cards usually open something up.
Similar games
Easthaven sits between Klondike and Yukon: Klondike's building rules, but a stock that deals across the table. If you like its "deal onto every column" stock, Scorpion has a similar idea with in-suit building.
Playing Easthaven on klondike.nz
Free, with nothing to download, install or sign up for, in any modern browser on a computer, tablet or phone. You get large, clear cards with a zoom control, a Hint button, unlimited Undo, Restart, and Auto Play once the game is won. Drag cards or tap a card and then its destination. The game tracks wins, time and moves, and you can turn off the sound or pick a different table colour.
Where these numbers come from
The klondike.nz team measured Easthaven in September 2026 with the rules read from this site's code.
- Rules from our code. The game's Easthaven settings: seven columns of three with the top card up; a 31-card stock with no waste that deals one card to each column; no redeal; alternating-colour building; runs move as a unit; any card into a space; dealing allowed with empty columns.
- A program copy of the game. We rebuilt Easthaven in software from those rules.
- Numbered deals. 3,000 seeded deals on the site's rules, plus 300 on a one-card-at-a-time version for comparison. The test can be repeated exactly.
- Reading each deal. We checked for an opening move and counted hidden Aces.
- The solver. It knows the hidden cards and the stock order, which no player does, so its result is a ceiling.
- Comparison. The published figure uses stricter rules, and our one-card version does not yet agree with it (see above).
- Error bars. Our 95% range for "solved" is 97.0–98.1%.
- Limits. A person cannot see the hidden cards or the stock, so real win rates will be lower than the ceiling.
Under the bonnet
The code is Python 3.11 with only the standard library, in easthaven.py. The solver is a depth-first search that tries up to 100,000 positions per deal and keeps a set of positions already visited. Deals are spread over processor cores with multiprocessing, and the 95% ranges are Wilson score intervals. We used Claude, an AI assistant from Anthropic, to help write and review the code and draft this page; the figures come only from running the code.
Questions players ask
Why is there no waste pile?
Because the stock deals straight onto the tableau, one card per column. It is Easthaven's defining rule.
What happens when the stock runs out?
No. Each stock card is dealt once, so plan before every click.
Does a King have to fill an empty column?
No, in Easthaven here any card can go into a space.
How does Easthaven compare with Klondike?
With everything known, far more Easthaven deals could be solved in our tests (97.6%) than Klondike deals (76.6% solved), but the two tests used different search limits, so treat that as a rough comparison.
Where is the rest of the study?
Our about page explains who we are, and the main Klondike page has the full study.
By Admin, klondike.nz. Study date: 19 September 2026.