How to play solitaire (Klondike)

Rules in short: build four piles, one per suit, from ace up to king. Move cards between seven columns in descending order and alternating colors, turn cards from the stock when you are stuck, and win when all 52 cards are on the foundations.

Setup Moves Draw 1 or 3 Strategy Can every game be won? Coach review FAQ

Setup

Deal seven columns from left to right: one card in the first, two in the second, up to seven in the last. Only the top card of each column is face up. The remaining 24 cards form the stock, face down. Above the columns are four empty foundations, one for each suit, and next to the stock is the waste, where turned cards land.

Legal moves

• Build down in the columns. A card can go on a card one rank higher of the opposite color: a red 9 on a black 10, a black jack on a red queen.
• Move runs together. A face-up run in correct order can move as a unit, like a black 8, red 7 and black 6 onto a red 9.
• Turn up face-down cards. When the last face-up card leaves a column, the card below turns over.
• Fill empty columns with kings. Only a king, or a run that starts with a king, may go into an empty column.
• Build the foundations up by suit. Start each with its ace, then 2, 3 and so on to the king.
• Use the stock. Turn cards onto the waste. The top waste card can go to a column or a foundation. When the stock is empty, turn the waste over and go through it again.
• Take a card back down. A card on a foundation may move back to a column if you need it to build.

On Snug Table, tap a card to send it to the best spot automatically, or drag it where you want. When every card is face up and the stock is gone, the Finish button plays the rest for you.

Draw 1 or draw 3

Snug Table has no Vegas scoring and no money of any kind. We count your moves and, if you like, your time.

Solitaire strategy for beginners

• Turn up hidden cards first. A move that reveals a face-down card is almost always better than one from the waste.
• Work on the longest columns. The tall columns on the right hide the most cards.
• Do not empty a column without a king ready. An empty column is only useful for a king.
• Hold back low cards on the foundations if you still need them. A red 4 on the foundation cannot hold a black 3 in a column.
• Think before you turn the stock. In draw 3, each pass changes which cards you can reach.
• Use undo freely. Trying a line and taking it back is how most players improve.

Can every solitaire game be won?

No. Some shuffles cannot be won no matter how you play, and many more are lost because a hidden card was needed earlier. That is why Snug Table offers winnable deals: before a shuffle goes on the list, our solver, which can see every card, has found a complete way to win it. With a random deal you get any shuffle, so a loss may not be your fault.

When we built the winnable list, our solver found a win for 81% of the random draw-1 deals it checked (1,000 of 1,238) and 72% of the draw-3 deals (600 of 838). It searches with a time limit, so the true share of winnable deals is somewhat higher.

The coach review

When you run out of useful moves, tap Coach review. The coach replays your game with the solver and finds the last move at which the deal could still be won, tells you which move closed the last winning line and what would have kept it open, and offers to take you back to that exact position so you can try again. After a win, it points out cards you drew past that could have gone straight home and compares your move count with the solver's line for the same deal.

Deal numbers and the daily deal

Every shuffle has a number. The order of the cards comes from a fixed formula: the seed is the SHA-256 hash of snugtable-solitaire| followed by the deal number, and the cards are shuffled with the same provably fair method as our Spades and Okey deals. Send a friend the deal number and they get exactly your game. The daily deal is a winnable draw-1 deal, the same for everyone that day.