Play Solitaire Online
This is Klondike, the version most people mean when they say solitaire: 7 tableau columns, a stock and waste on the side and 4 foundations to fill. It runs in the browser with nothing to install and no account to make. Pick the Winnable Deal option and the hand in front of you is one the game has already proven can be solved, so a lost game points back to the order you played, not a shuffle that was hopeless from the start.
Klondike is the front door rather than the whole house. Solitaire.cx runs 20 games in all, each with its own certified deals and its own how to play guide, from FreeCell and Spider through Pyramid and Yukon. This page covers Klondike in full and then points you to the rest of the collection further down.
How to Play Klondike Solitaire
The aim is to move all 52 cards up to the 4 foundations, one suit each, every foundation built up in its own suit from its Ace to its King. Every move you make in the columns serves that one goal. Most of the real work is uncovering the face down cards that block the ones you need, which is why a board that looks stuck has usually just been played in the wrong order.
The columns are where most of the thinking happens. Cards there run down in alternating colors, so a red seven goes onto a black eight and a black jack onto a red queen. An ordered run travels as one block rather than a card at a time, and each time you free the bottom card off a face down one, that card flips up and hands you something new to use. Once the table goes quiet you draw from the stock and carry on.
The Setup: Columns, Stock and Foundations
The deal always has the same shape. The board is 7 columns of rising height, a single card in the first and 7 in the last, dealt out from the left, 28 cards in total. Just the lowest card in every column is turned face up to begin. The remaining 24 cards become the stock, and the 4 spaces above the columns wait for their Aces. An empty column is prime ground, but it is fussy: only a King, or a run that begins with a King, may move into one.
Draw 1 and Draw 3
Draw 1 (shown here as Turn 1) flips one stock card at a time and is the gentler, more relaxed game. Draw 3 (Turn 3) brings the stock up three cards at a time with only the top one playable, so the order they arrive in starts to count and a card you pass can take a while to circle back. Both deal the very same board; they only change how freely the stock gives its cards up.
Clean Scores and Vegas
A clean score is a game finished with no hints, no undo, no solver and no auto finish, which is what the leaderboards rank. Assisted runs still count for practice, they just sit to one side of competitive play. Standard scoring lets you recycle the stock as often as you like, while Vegas scoring is tighter and treats every card as real money.
How to Win: Strategy That Actually Helps
Klondike rewards patience far more than speed. A handful of habits separate a cleared board from a stalled one, and none of them take long to pick up.
- Turn the face down cards over first. Until the table is open you are half guessing, so dig those hidden cards out before anything else.
- Do not rush every Ace and two upward. Low cards are safe on the foundations, but one sent up too soon can no longer hold a card of the other color down in the tableau.
- Spend empty columns with care. A space is your most flexible asset, yet it takes nothing but a King, so line up the King you mean to use before you clear that last card out.
- On Draw 3, read the waste before you spend a move. Sometimes the right play is to leave a card where it sits so the next pass through the stock lines up the way you need.
For the longer version, the how to win at solitaire guide works through these calls deal by deal, and the how to play guide lays out every rule from the first card to the last.
Are These Deals Winnable?
With Winnable Deal, yes. Those hands come from a pool that has been replayed and proven solvable before it ever reaches you, so the game on screen genuinely has a path home and a loss is on the line you took, not on the cards. Random Deal is the honest opposite: a plain shuffle with no promise attached, the way a real pack would fall. If the question of which shuffles can be solved at all interests you, the is solitaire winnable guide gets into it properly.
Pick a Deal, or Take the Daily
The New Game panel lets you set the kind of hand before the first card moves. Winnable Deal draws from the certified pool, Random Deal gives you an ordinary shuffle and Daily Challenge hands everyone the same certified deal for the date, so a clean finish can be measured against the rest of the table. Streaks, shareable results and clean scoring all live on the daily solitaire challenge page, kept apart from your casual games.
Explore the Full Solitaire Collection
If Klondike is the only solitaire you have met, there is plenty waiting next door. Every game below plays in the same browser with the same certified deals and the same clean leaderboards, and each one has a written guide of its own.
More Klondike
Stay with the classic and change the draw. Klondike Turn 3 keeps everything you already know and only loosens the stock, for players who want the sterner test.
Spider
Spider drops the separate foundations and asks you to build 8 full suits down the columns themselves. Begin with 1 suit to learn the shape, then move up to 2 suits and the full 4 suit game. The Spider guide covers all 3.
FreeCell and its family
FreeCell deals every card face up and hands you 4 open cells, so with careful reading almost every game can be solved. Its relatives each change a single rule. Baker's Game builds in suit and Eight Off hands you more cells, while Seahaven Towers spreads 10 narrow towers and ForeCell, Three Cells and Two Cells trim the room you have to work in. The FreeCell variants guide lines them all up side by side.
Baker's Dozen and its cousins
Baker's Dozen spreads the whole pack into 13 short columns with no stock pile and no holding cells, which makes it a pure test of sequencing. Three close cousins each ease or change one rule: Spanish Patience, Castles in Spain and Portuguese Solitaire. The Baker's Dozen guide spells out how each one plays.
Clear the board
For a quicker rhythm, Pyramid pairs cards that add up to 13, TriPeaks runs long chains one rank up or down and Golf sweeps the columns onto a single pile. Each comes with its own guide: Pyramid, TriPeaks and Golf.
Yukon
Yukon looks like Klondike with the stock removed, then lets you pick up a whole group of cards at once, in order or not, which turns it into a heavier and more open puzzle. The Yukon guide breaks down the group move that defines it.
You can browse the lot from the full games list, and every guide we have written sits in the guides hub.
Where Solitaire Comes From
Solitaire is far older than the screen. Card games for a single player spread through Europe in the late eighteenth century, and the English speaking world still calls the whole family Patience, after the quality the games quietly demand. Klondike picked up its name around the Gold Rush of the 1890s and later became the version that shipped on millions of office computers, which is how a parlor pastime turned into the game most people picture the moment they hear the word solitaire.
Common Questions
Is solitaire free to play here?
Yes. Every game on the site is free, runs in the browser and needs no download and no account. The optional sign in exists only if you want your scores saved across devices.
Is every deal winnable?
The Winnable Deal option uses certified deals that are proven solvable in advance. Random Deal is a normal shuffle and may have no solution at all, which is the honest nature of a real pack. There is more in is solitaire winnable.
Does undo hurt my score?
You can undo as much as you like, but it marks the run as assisted so it stays out of the clean leaderboard. Undo is there to help you learn, not to punish you.
What is the difference between Turn 1 and Turn 3?
Turn 1 gives you the stock a single card per turn and is the easier game. Turn 3 deals it in threes with only the top card reachable, so the stock takes more thought. The board itself is dealt the same either way.
How does the daily challenge work?
Every player is handed the very same certified Klondike hand on a given day. The daily challenge page tracks streaks, clean scores and share links without mixing them into ordinary games.
Why was my move rejected?
The engine checks every move against the real rules: color, rank, suit, whether the card is face up and whether a space is open to anything other than a King. Break one of those and the move will not stick.