Klondike is the game most people simply call "solitaire." It is the version that shipped with generations of computers, the one your grandparents dealt out with a real deck, and the reason the word patience became a household name. Yet plenty of people play it by instinct without ever learning the actual rules, which means they miss winnable games and never quite understand why a deal stalls. This guide fixes that. By the end you will know exactly how to play Klondike solitaire from the first deal to the final King.
We will walk through the board piece by piece, explain every legal move in plain language, and finish with a simple order of play you can follow on any deal. You can practise as you read by opening our free Klondike solitaire game in another tab and matching each step to what you see on screen.
The Goal of Klondike Solitaire
Before touching a card, it helps to know what winning looks like. Klondike uses a single standard deck of 52 cards, and your job is to move every one of those cards onto four foundation piles. Each foundation collects a single suit and is built upward in order, starting with the Ace and finishing with the King: Ace, two, three, and so on up to Jack, Queen, King. When all four foundations are complete, every card is off the table and you have won.
Everything else in the game, the shuffling of columns and the flipping of the stock, exists only to help you free the cards you need in the right order. Keep that single goal in mind and the individual moves start to make sense.
Setting Up the Board
A Klondike deal has three distinct areas: the tableau in the middle, the stock and waste at one side, and the four foundations along the top. Understanding how the cards are dealt is the first real step.
The Seven Tableau Columns
The main playing area is the tableau, made up of seven columns. They are dealt in a staircase: the first column gets one card, the second gets two, the third gets three, and so on up to seven cards in the last column. That accounts for 28 of your 52 cards. In every column, only the final card is turned face up; all the cards beneath it stay face down until you uncover them through play.
The Stock and Waste
The 24 cards left over after the tableau is dealt form the stock, a face-down reserve pile. When you cannot or do not want to make a tableau move, you turn cards from the stock into a face-up waste pile beside it. The top card of the waste is always available to play.
The Four Foundations
The four foundation spaces begin empty. They wait for the Aces, which are the only cards allowed to start a foundation. From there each foundation grows upward in its own suit until it holds the King.
The Rules of Movement
Klondike has a small, tidy set of movement rules. Once you internalise them, you can read any board at a glance.
- Build the tableau down in alternating colours. A card can be placed on a tableau card that is one rank higher and the opposite colour. A red six goes on a black seven; a black nine goes on a red ten.
- Move Aces to the foundations, then build up by suit. Foundations go the opposite direction from the tableau: same suit, ascending from Ace to King.
- Only Kings fill an empty column. When a tableau column is emptied, only a King (or a valid sequence headed by a King) may move into that space.
- Flip a face-down card when it is exposed. As soon as you move the face-up card off a pile, turn the newly exposed card face up. This is how you dig into the buried cards.
- Move ordered groups together. A run of cards already in correct alternating-colour order can be moved as a single unit to another column.
That last rule is what turns Klondike from a card-flipping chore into a real puzzle. Being able to relocate an ordered stack lets you uncover face-down cards that would otherwise stay locked away.
Playing a Hand: The Order of Moves
With the rules in hand, here is a reliable sequence to work through on every deal. Follow it loosely rather than rigidly, but it will keep you out of most beginner traps.
- Scan for Aces and twos. Send any Ace straight to a foundation, and follow with a two of the same suit if it is available.
- Turn over face-down cards first. Prioritise moves that flip a hidden card, because every face-down card you reveal is new information and new opportunity.
- Build the tableau to expose more cards. Move face-up cards onto legal partners to keep uncovering the columns.
- Draw from the stock only when tableau moves run out. The stock is your reserve; work the board first, then turn cards to find fresh options.
- Keep foundations balanced. Do not rush every low card up top, because tableau cards are useful for building runs. Play up when it helps, hold back when it does not.
As you repeat this loop, columns shrink, face-down cards flip, and the foundations climb. Try the routine yourself on the Klondike solitaire board and watch how quickly it becomes second nature.
Draw One or Draw Three?
Klondike comes in two common flavours that change how the stock behaves. In draw-one, you flip a single card from the stock each time, so every card in the reserve is reachable. In draw-three, you flip three cards at once and can only play the top one of the trio, which makes the game noticeably harder. Beginners should start with draw-one to learn the flow, then graduate to draw-three for a stiffer test. We compare them in depth in our guide to draw 1 vs draw 3 Klondike, and the full rulebook lives in the Klondike solitaire rules.
Common Beginner Questions
Two things confuse almost every new player, so it is worth clearing them up early.
Why Can I Not Move This Card?
Nine times out of ten the answer is colour. Remember that the tableau builds in alternating colours, so a card only lands on one of the opposite colour and one rank higher. If a move is refused, check the colour before anything else. Our roundup of common Klondike mistakes covers the rest of the usual snags.
Is Every Deal Winnable?
No. Klondike is a game of both skill and luck, and some deals simply cannot be solved no matter how well you play. The large majority are winnable, though, so a stuck game is often a strategy problem rather than a dead deal. We dig into the numbers in are all Klondike games winnable.
Where to Go Next
Klondike is the doorway to a whole family of patience games. Once the classic feels comfortable, the same card-handling skills carry over to its cousins. Spider solitaire raises the stakes with two decks and suit-based runs, while FreeCell solitaire deals every card face up so that skill, not luck, decides the game. If you want a side-by-side comparison, our article on Klondike vs Spider vs FreeCell lays out the differences clearly.
Conclusion
Playing Klondike solitaire comes down to a handful of ideas: deal seven staircased columns, build them down in alternating colours, send each suit up to its foundation from Ace to King, and use the stock as a reserve when the board stalls. Prioritise flipping face-down cards, keep an eye on colour before every move, and remember that most deals can be won with patient play. Ready to try it for real? Open our free Klondike solitaire and deal a fresh hand, or explore all the games and guides on the klondikesolitaire.info homepage.