How to Play Solitaire — Free Online Rules & Strategy

To play Solitaire you deal 52 cards into seven tableau columns, then move cards between those columns in descending order and alternating colors until you can send all four suits up to the foundation piles, ace through king. Cards you cannot place come from the stock pile one at a time. Win the game by clearing every card into the four foundations. That is the whole game in three sentences — but the gap between knowing the rules and actually finishing a deal is where the real Solitaire skill lives, and this guide covers both. You can play the full Klondike game free in your browser at Offline Games Arcade, with no download and no sign-up.

How a Solitaire deal is set up

Klondike Solitaire — the version almost everyone means by “Solitaire” — uses one standard 52-card deck laid out in four zones:

The tableau — seven columns across the middle of the board. The first column gets one card, the second two, and so on up to seven in the last column. Only the top card of each column starts face up; everything beneath it is face down and hidden.
The foundations — four empty piles, one per suit. These are your goal. Each fills from ace at the bottom up to king at the top.
The stock — the 24 cards left over after the deal, sitting face down in the corner.
The waste — where stock cards land when you turn them over. Only the top waste card is playable.

That layout is why Solitaire feels the way it does: 21 of the 28 tableau cards start hidden, so the opening board is mostly unknown information. Every move you make is partly about progress and partly about revealing what you are actually working with.

The rules of Klondike Solitaire

Five rules cover essentially every legal move:

Build tableau columns down in alternating colors. A red six goes on a black seven; a black jack goes on a red queen. Same-color stacking is never allowed.
Move sequences, not just single cards. Any face-up run that is already in correct descending, alternating order travels as a unit. Grabbing a properly built five-card run and relocating it is often the move that breaks a stuck board open.
Only a king can start an empty column. Clear a column out and it stays empty until you have a king (or a king-headed run) to drop into it.
Draw from the stock when you run out of moves. In the version here, cards turn over one at a time, and when the stock empties you can recycle the waste back into it up to three times. That limit matters — it means the stock is a resource to spend deliberately, not an infinite do-over.
Foundations build up by suit, ace to king. Aces go down first, then twos on top of them, and so on. Clear all 52 cards into the four foundations and you have won.

The one wrinkle worth knowing: a card sitting on a foundation can normally be pulled back down to the tableau if you need it, but planning around that is a bad habit. Treat the foundations as roughly one-way and you will make better decisions.

Controls: mouse, touch, and the shortcuts

The browser version plays the same on a laptop and a phone. Click or drag a card with the mouse, or tap a card and then tap where you want it to go on a touchscreen. Three shortcuts are worth learning because they save real time:

Double-tap (or double-click) a card to send it straight to its foundation if it is legal there — much faster than dragging aces and twos across the board.
Auto Complete appears once the outcome is decided and no face-down cards remain. One press flies the whole board home instead of making you play out 30 obvious moves.
Undo takes back your last move, and Hint points out a legal play when you genuinely cannot find one. The board also tracks Moves, Time, and your best result, so you can measure whether your play is actually improving.

Solitaire strategy that wins more deals

Most random Klondike deals are winnable, and most losses come from a handful of avoidable errors rather than a bad shuffle. Three habits do most of the work.

Uncover face-down cards first

When you have a choice between two legal moves, take the one that flips a face-down tableau card. Hidden cards are the only thing standing between you and a solved board, and every one you turn over expands your options for the rest of the game. A move that looks tidy but reveals nothing has usually cost you a turn.

Do not rush every card to the foundations

This is the mistake that quietly kills winnable deals. Aces and twos should go up immediately — they can never be useful in the tableau. But a red five sent home too early is a red five that is no longer available to hold a black four, and boards get stuck for exactly that reason. Send mid-rank cards up only when both lower cards of the opposite color are already home, or when the board clearly has no use for them.

Empty a column, then be patient with it

An empty column is the most powerful square on the board — it holds a king, parks an awkward run, or buys you the space to unstack a column you could not otherwise touch. Work toward clearing your shortest column early. Then resist filling it with the first king you see: check whether that king is one you actually need moved, and whether a different run would unlock more.

Common mistakes that lose winnable deals

Burning the stock early. Cycling the stock before you have played out the tableau wastes recycles you may need later. Exhaust your board moves first.
Moving a run just because you can. If a move neither reveals a face-down card nor opens a column nor sets up a foundation play, it is usually not worth making.
Filling an empty column with a king you did not need to move. The wrong king locks the column for the rest of the game.
Forgetting the waste pile. The top waste card is a live option on every single turn, and it is the one players most often overlook when scanning for moves.

What to play when you want a different kind of patience

Once Klondike feels routine, the same instincts transfer well to its relatives:

FreeCell — solitaire with the luck removed. Four open cells give you temporary storage, nearly every deal is solvable, and winning comes down purely to planning.
Spider Solitaire — the deeper two-deck version. You build King-to-Ace runs in a single suit across ten columns, and only completed runs come off the board.
Mahjong — tile matching with the same “which move opens the most doors” logic, minus the cards.
Peg Solitaire — a pure single-player board puzzle where the goal is to finish with exactly one peg left.
High or Low — the two-minute version, when you want cards but not a whole deal.

And if you want an opponent rather than a deck, Hearts, Gin Rummy, and Crazy Eights all play in the same browser tab with nothing to install.

FAQ

Is every Solitaire deal winnable? No. Some random shuffles have no solution, though the large majority of Klondike deals can be won with good play. If you lose a deal, it is far more often a sequencing mistake than an impossible board.

What is the goal of Solitaire? Move all 52 cards onto the four foundation piles, each sorted by suit and built in order from ace up to king. Clearing the tableau, stock, and waste completely finishes the game.

How many cards do you turn over from the stock at a time? One at a time in this version, and you can recycle the waste pile back into the stock up to three times per game. That makes the deal more forgiving than three-card draw while still asking you to spend the stock carefully.

Can you move more than one card at a time in Solitaire? Yes, as long as the cards form a valid descending run in alternating colors. The whole sequence moves together onto a card one rank higher and of the opposite color, or into an empty column if it is headed by a king.

Is Solitaire free to play with no download? Yes. Solitaire runs free in any browser with no download or sign-up, and it also plays fully offline in the free Offline Games Arcade app for iOS and Android.

Play all free games →