Klondike Solitaire Rules

Klondike is the solitaire most people mean when they say "solitaire" — one deck, seven columns, and the familiar rhythm of flipping cards from the stock. It shipped with Windows 3.0 in 1990 simply as "Solitaire," and its rules have been the de facto standard ever since. This page is the complete reference: the setup, every legal move, both scoring systems, and the edge cases that trip players up. If you are here to improve rather than learn, the strategy guide picks up where this page ends, and the Klondike page lets you put it all into practice immediately.

The setup

Klondike uses one standard 52-card deck. The deal builds seven tableau columns of increasing depth: one card in the first column, two in the second, and so on up to seven in the last. That places 28 cards in the tableau, of which only the top card of each column is face up — 21 cards start face down. The remaining 24 cards form the stock, held face down in the upper corner, with an empty waste pile beside it.

Above the tableau sit four empty foundations, one per suit. Everything in the game is in service of filling them.

The objective

You win by moving all 52 cards onto the foundations. Each foundation belongs to a single suit and builds strictly upward: Ace first, then 2, 3, and so on to the King. An Ace may be placed on any empty foundation the moment it becomes available; every later card must match the suit and be exactly one rank higher than the card beneath it. When all four foundations show their Kings, the game is over.

Tableau moves

The tableau is where the real game happens, and its building rule is the opposite of the foundations: columns build downward in alternating colors. A black 7 may only be placed on a red 8; a red Queen only on a black King. Suit does not matter beyond color — either red 8 will do.

• Sequences move as a unit. Any face-up run in proper descending, alternating-color order can be picked up and moved together, and you may split a run at any point — take the whole thing or just its tail.
• Uncovering flips. When the last face-up card leaves a column, the face-down card beneath it turns face up. Revealing these 21 hidden cards is the engine of the game.
• Empty columns accept only Kings. When a column is cleared entirely, the gap may be filled only by a King or a sequence headed by a King. No other rank qualifies. This single rule shapes most of Klondike's strategy.

The stock and waste: Turn 1 vs Turn 3

When the tableau offers nothing, you draw from the stock. How you draw defines the two standard variants:

In Turn 3, playing the top card exposes the one beneath it, so a single play can unlock a chain — but a card buried in the middle of a fan stays locked until the cards above it are used or the stock is recycled. This is why Turn 3 roughly halves the win rate without changing a single other rule.

Passes through the stock are the other dial. Most casual digital versions allow unlimited passes: when the stock empties, the waste flips over and becomes the stock again. Stricter traditions limit you — commonly one pass in Turn 1, or three passes in Turn 3 — and Vegas scoring depends on such limits to keep the gamble honest.

Scoring

Standard scoring

The common system descends from Microsoft's implementation. Moving a card from waste to tableau earns 5 points; from waste or tableau to a foundation, 10 points; turning a face-down tableau card face up, 5 points. Moving a card off a foundation back to the tableau costs 15 points, and in timed games points tick away as the clock runs, with a time bonus for finishing fast. Recycling the waste in Turn 1 games typically costs points as well.

Vegas scoring

Vegas mode reframes the game as a casino wager. You start $52 in the hole — a one-dollar buy-in per card — and earn $5 for every card placed on a foundation. Eleven foundation cards puts you at break-even; a full win pays $260 against your $52 stake. Classic Vegas rules permit only a single pass through the stock (some versions allow three in Turn 3 mode), and cumulative Vegas tracks your bankroll across consecutive games, which turns a casual pastime into a surprisingly tense session.

Undo conventions

Traditional paper rules have no undo, but nearly every digital version offers one. The common conventions: undo is unlimited but each use costs score (or counts as a move), stock recycling and foundation moves can usually be undone like any other move, and Vegas-mode implementations often disable undo entirely or charge for it, since taking back a wager defeats the point. Serious players treat undo as a planning instrument — peek, evaluate, undo, commit — a habit shared with Spider strategy.

Common misconceptions

• "Any card can go on an empty column." Only Kings. This differs from Spider and FreeCell, where any card fills a gap.
• "Foundations build in alternating colors." Foundations build by suit, upward. Alternating colors applies only to the tableau, and only downward.
• "You must move an entire sequence together." You may split a face-up sequence anywhere and move just part of it.
• "A card on the foundation is locked forever." Most versions let you bring a foundation card back to the tableau if it has a legal home — often the right play when you need a red 5 to release a buried card.
• "Every deal is winnable." Around 8% of deals are unsolvable even with perfect information, and hidden cards push the practical win rate far lower. A loss is not always a mistake.
• "Klondike and Spider are basically the same game." They share a table layout and little else — different deck counts, different building rules, and no foundations at all in Spider. The full three-way comparison maps the differences.

If any term here is unfamiliar — tableau, foundation, waste, stock — the glossary defines the full solitaire vocabulary in one place. Once the rules feel automatic, the real question becomes which legal move to make, and that is a deep enough question that we gave it its own page: the Klondike strategy guide.

Frequently asked questions