Klondike Solitaire from the ground up: the complete guide

Klondike is the game most people mean when they say "Solitaire", and the one many New Zealanders still call Patience. This page is the full reference: where the game comes from, every part of the table and what it is called, the rules as they work here, a walkthrough of a first game move by move, and a glossary you can come back to.

If you are after the odds — how often a deal can be won, and what the first layout tells you — they live on our main Klondike page, which reports the full results of our study. Here we keep the numbers to a minimum and concentrate on understanding the game itself.

A short history of the game

Patience games were being played with ordinary packs of cards in Europe by the 1800s, and Klondike is one of a large family of them. The name is usually linked to the Klondike region of Canada's Yukon and the gold rush there at the end of the 1890s, although exactly how the game got the name is not well documented. Wikipedia's article on Klondike is a good starting point if you want the history in more detail.

What turned Klondike into the best-known card game in the world was the computer. A version called simply "Solitaire" shipped with Microsoft Windows 3.0 in 1990, and for a generation of office workers and family computer users it became the first thing they learned to do with a mouse. Dragging a card from one pile to another was, in a very real sense, practice for the rest of the desktop.

The game you play here is the same Klondike: one standard pack of 52 cards, seven columns, a stock pile and four foundations. On this page the stock turns one card at a time; if you would like the harder three-card version, see Klondike Turn 3.

The parts of the table

Klondike has its own vocabulary. Once you know the six names below, every rule and every tip makes sense.

The rules, in the order you meet them

Laying out the cards

The 52 cards are shuffled. Seven columns are dealt: one card in the first, two in the second, and so on up to seven in the last. In each column only the bottom card is turned face up, so 7 cards are visible and 21 are hidden. The remaining 24 cards form the stock.

Moves between columns

• A face-up card can go on a card one rank higher of the opposite colour: a red 6 on a black 7, a black Queen on a red King.
• You can move a whole build at once, as long as its top card follows that rule where it lands.
• When you move the last face-up card off a hidden card, that hidden card is turned over and joins play.
• An empty column can only be filled by a King or a build starting with a King.

Drawing from the stock

• Click the stock to turn its top card onto the waste.
• The top card of the waste can be played to the tableau or a foundation.
• When the stock is empty, click it to turn the waste back over and go through again. On this site there is no limit on how many times you can do that.

Sending cards home

• Each foundation starts with an Ace and is built up in one suit: Ace, 2, 3 and so on to King.
• Cards can go to a foundation from the tableau or from the waste.
• If you need a card back, this site also lets you move the top card of a foundation back into the tableau.

How a game ends

You win when all 52 cards are on the foundations. When every hidden card has been turned over and the stock no longer matters, Auto Play can send the rest home for you.

Playing a first game on klondike.nz

Here is how a sensible first game goes, whatever cards you are dealt.

1. Look before you click. Scan the seven face-up cards. Any Aces go straight to the foundations. Note which columns are long: the sixth and seventh columns hide five and six cards, and those hidden cards are what you most need to reach.
2. Make tableau moves that turn over a card. Moving a red 5 onto a black 6 is worth far more if it uncovers a hidden card underneath. A move that only shuffles face-up cards around is worth less.
3. Prefer the longer columns. When two moves are equally good, take the one that works on a column with more hidden cards.
4. Turn the stock when the tableau is stuck. Play from the waste whenever it helps, but do not feel you must use every card the stock shows you.
5. Save a space for a King. Emptying a column is only useful if you have a King ready to go there, ideally one that unlocks something.
6. Send cards up to the foundations in step. Twos and threes can go up freely. With higher cards, check you will not need them in the tableau to hold a lower card of the other colour.
7. Use Undo to learn. If you reach a dead end, step back a few moves and try another order. That is the fastest way to see which choices mattered.

What the opening layout means

This site is about reading the deal, so here are three figures from our study that every Klondike player should know. Across 10,000 of our deals, 88.0% started with at least one Ace hidden in the tableau, and 8.6% offered no move at all among the seven face-up cards. Neither is a reason to give up: a computer player that sees only the face-up cards, and never undoes a move, still won 42.3% of Turn 1 deals. The full breakdown, with ranges and the published comparison, is on our main Klondike page.

Klondike's close relatives

Once you know Klondike, several other games on this site will feel familiar:

• Klondike Turn 3 and Solitaire Turn 3: the same game, but the stock turns three cards at a time.
• Solitaire Double: Klondike with two packs and nine columns.
• Yukon: Klondike's layout with no stock, where any face-up card can be moved with everything on top of it.
• Easthaven: three cards per column, and the stock deals a card onto every column at once.

Playing Klondike on klondike.nz

The game is free, and there is nothing to download, install or sign up for. It runs in any modern browser on a computer, tablet or phone. The cards are large and clear, with a zoom control if you want the table bigger. You have a Hint button, unlimited Undo, Restart, and Auto Play to finish a solved game, and you can drag cards or tap a card and then its destination. The game tracks wins, time and moves, sound can be switched off, and there is a fullscreen mode and a choice of table colours.

Klondike words, explained

• Auto Play: sends the remaining cards to the foundations once the game is effectively won.
• Build: a run of face-up cards in descending order and alternating colour.
• Deal: the starting layout; also one particular shuffle of the pack.
• Foundation: one of the four piles built up by suit from Ace to King.
• Patience: the traditional British and New Zealand name for single-player card games.
• Redeal / pass: turning the waste back over to go through the stock again.
• Space: an empty tableau column; only Kings may enter.
• Stock: the face-down pile of undealt cards.
• Tableau: the seven columns in the middle of the table.
• Turn 1 / Turn 3: whether the stock turns one card or three at a time.
• Waste: the face-up pile of cards turned from the stock.

How our figures were produced

The three figures on this page come from the klondike.nz study of September 2026. The method is set out in full on our main Klondike page; in short:

1. Rules from our code. We read this site's own game code: seven columns, Turn 1, unlimited passes through the stock, Kings only into spaces.
2. A program copy. We rebuilt the game as a program and checked its moves against the rules over 2,000 games.
3. Numbered deals. Every deal comes from a numbered seed, so the whole test can be repeated exactly.
4. Two kinds of measurement. The Ace and first-move figures come from inspecting 10,000 deals. The 42.3% comes from a rule-following computer player that only sees face-up cards and never undoes a move, so it is a floor: a careful person with Undo can do better.

Under the bonnet

The simulation is written in Python 3.11 using only the standard library, in a module called klondike.py, with a shared runner that spreads deals across processor cores using multiprocessing. Ranges are Wilson score 95% intervals. An AI assistant, Claude by Anthropic, helped write and review the code and draft this page; the numbers themselves come only from running the code, and the team checked them against published research before publishing.

Questions players ask

When people say "Solitaire", do they mean Klondike?

For most people, yes. "Solitaire" in North America and "Patience" in New Zealand and Britain are general names for single-player card games, but when someone says it without qualification they almost always mean Klondike.

How is this page different from the home page?

It is the same game with the same rules. This page is the guide to how Klondike works; the home page reports what our study found about how often deals can be won.

What is the point of the Kings-only rule?

It is the traditional rule, and it is what makes Klondike a puzzle. Because only a King can start a new column, emptying one is only useful if you have a King to put there.

Is a card on a foundation stuck there for good?

Yes, on this site the top card of a foundation can be moved back into the tableau if you need it to hold a lower card.

Does it matter which column I work on first?

Usually the columns with the most hidden cards. Turning those cards over gives you more choices for the rest of the game.

By Admin, klondike.nz. Study date: 18 September 2026.