Yukon Solitaire: a deal with most of its cards already showing

Yukon is Klondike's bold cousin. There is no stock pile at all: every one of the 52 cards is dealt into seven columns at the start, and 31 of them are face up. You are looking at well over half the pack from move one. So surely the opening layout tells you a lot?

We dealt 10,000 Yukon games under this site's rules to find out. On average 1.6 of the 4 Aces started face down. Our simple computer player won 4.4% of deals with two or more Aces hidden and 4.5% with one or none hidden — no meaningful difference at all. Where the Aces start doesn't decide a Yukon game.

What does? Planning. A solver that could see every card proved at least 67.0% of deals winnable. Our no-peek player, which never undoes, won only 4.5% overall. That gap — between what's possible and what a player without look-ahead achieves — is where your skill lives.

A Yukon deal, by the numbers

Taken together, the solver says between 67.0% and 96.6% of Yukon deals can be won (67.0% proven, plus up to 29.6% it couldn't settle). The player's 4.5% is a floor set by a weak player, not a measure of how winnable Yukon is.

How Yukon is played on klondike.nz

Dealing all 52

Seven columns of 1, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11 cards. The first column is a single face-up card; in the others, the bottom five cards are face up and the rest face down. No stock, no waste.

Getting every card home

Move all 52 cards to the four foundations, Ace to King in each suit.

The big difference

• You can move any face-up card, together with everything on top of it, even if the cards above it aren't in order.
• The card you move must land on a card one rank higher of the opposite colour.
• Only a King (with whatever is on top of it) may fill an empty column.
• Uncovered face-down cards turn over.

If you'd like the same deal with an in-suit twist, see Alaska Solitaire.

Reading a Yukon deal

Ignore the Aces; count the hidden cards

Our player's results didn't budge with Ace position, so don't let a buried Ace put you off. Instead look at the 21 face-down cards: they sit in the six right-hand columns, one to six per column. Uncovering them is the main job.

Use the group move to dig

Because any face-up card can move with its whole stack, you can lift a big, untidy block off a face-down card in one go. Look for face-up cards near the top of the tall columns that have a legal landing spot.

Plan the Kings

Kings-only empty columns mean your first empty column should be earmarked for a King whose stack will free something useful.

Don't bury low cards under group moves

A group move can drop a mess of cards onto a column you'll need later. Before you make one, check what you are covering.

Take your time

Winning games for our player ran to about 97 moves. Yukon rewards a patient, planned approach far more than quick reactions.

A first-minute checklist for Yukon

With 31 of 52 cards showing, a Yukon deal can be read carefully before you move. This routine follows from what our numbers suggest matters, and what doesn't.

1. Skip the Ace hunt. Our player's win rate was the same whether the Aces started buried or not, so don't let their position steer your first moves.
2. Find the columns with the most hidden cards. The right-hand columns hide up to six cards each. Those are where the game is decided.
3. Look for face-up cards high in those columns with a legal landing spot. Moving one lifts everything on top of it and may uncover a hidden card.
4. Check what a group move will cover. Dropping a stack onto a column can bury a card you need soon.
5. Identify your first King move. Decide which King should take the first empty column, and which cards it will bring with it.
6. Re-read after every uncovered card. Each new card can open a group move that wasn't there before.

Our solver's range — between 67.0% and 96.6% of deals winnable with every card visible — says most Yukon games are there to be won. The checklist is about seeing them through.

Three ways players misread a Yukon deal

• "Lots of face-up cards means an easy game." Showing 31 cards helps, but the 21 hidden ones are spread over six columns, and the deepest hold six each. How easily you can reach them matters more than how many cards you can see.
• "A buried Ace is a bad sign." Our player won 4.4% with two or more buried and 4.5% with fewer. The difference is noise.
• "Group moves are always good." They're powerful, but a careless group move can bury the very card you need next. Check what lands where.

Reading a Yukon deal well is mostly about the hidden cards and the Kings, not the Aces.

Playing Yukon on klondike.nz

Free in any modern browser — desktop, tablet or phone — with no download, account or email. Large cards with zoom; Hint, unlimited Undo, Restart and Auto Play; drag or tap; wins, time and moves for your current game; sound, fullscreen and table colour settings. A satisfying one for a quiet morning in Hawke's Bay.

Where these numbers come from

The klondike.nz team ran this study in September 2026.

1. Rules from our code. Columns of 1, 6–11 cards with five face up, no stock, any face-up card moves with its stack, alternating colours, Kings only in empty columns.
2. A program version of the game. Rebuilt to match those rules.
3. Numbered deals. Seeds 1 to 10,000 for the player and 1 to 500 for the solver.
4. Looking at each deal. We counted the face-down Aces.
5. Two players. A look-ahead player that sees only visible cards and never undoes (10,000 deals), and a solver that sees every card, limited to 50,000 positions per deal (500 deals).
6. Comparison. There is no published Yukon figure in the study we compare against, so these results stand on their own.
7. Error bars. 62.8–71.0% is the 95% range around the solver's 67.0%.
8. Limits. The player is weak and the solver's budget left 29.6% undecided, so quote the range, not a single number.

Under the bonnet

We wrote the simulation in Python 3.11 using only the standard library. Yukon (and Alaska) live in yukon.py. A shared runner splits the work across 19 worker processes with multiprocessing: the 10,000-game player run took about 2 minutes and the 500-deal solver run about 8. The player looks 300 positions ahead over the visible cards and scores foundation cards, hidden cards and correct links; the solver is a depth-first search with a 50,000-position budget and only provably safe automatic moves. Ranges are Wilson score 95% intervals. Claude, Anthropic's AI assistant, helped us write and review the code and draft this page. It produced none of the numbers; those come from running the code.

Questions players ask

Do buried Aces make Yukon harder?

Not in our test: 4.4% wins with two or more buried against 4.5% with one or none.

How many Yukon deals can be won?

At least 67.0% with every card visible, and possibly up to 96.6%.

Can I move cards that aren't in sequence?

Yes — that's Yukon's signature rule. Any face-up card moves with everything on top of it.

Why is there no stock?

All 52 cards are dealt at the start. Everything you need is on the table somewhere.

What's similar to Yukon?

Alaska uses the same deal, and Klondike is where it all started.

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