How to Play Solitaire (Klondike): Rules & Winning Tips (2026)

Klondike is the Solitaire — the one that shipped with every computer and quietly ate a billion office afternoons. It looks simple, and the rules really are, but there's just enough decision-making underneath that a careful player wins far more often than a careless one. This guide teaches the standard game cleanly: the setup, the goal, how cards move, and the handful of habits that turn losses into wins. Play along at Solitaire as you read.

The setup

You play with one standard 52-card deck. The table has four areas:

• The tableau — seven columns laid out left to right. The first column gets one card, the second gets two, on up to the seventh column with seven, for 28 cards total. In each column only the top card is face-up; everything beneath it is face-down.
• The stock — the 24 leftover cards, kept in a face-down draw pile.
• The waste — where cards you turn from the stock land, face-up, ready to play.
• The four foundations — four empty slots above the tableau. This is where you're building toward victory.

Take a second to read the board before touching anything. The face-up cards you start with are your whole opening hand.

The goal

You win by building the four foundations — one per suit. Each foundation starts with an Ace and is built up in sequence by suit: Ace, 2, 3, and so on through 10, Jack, Queen, King. Hearts on hearts, spades on spades, no mixing. When all four foundations reach King, every card is home and the game is won.

That's the only finish line. Every move you make in the tableau or the stock is really just a means of feeding those four piles.

How to move cards

The tableau is your workspace, and it follows two rules that are easy to remember:

• Build down in alternating colors. You can place a card onto a tableau card that is one rank higher and the opposite color. A red 6 goes on a black 7; a black 9 goes on a red 10. Color always alternates as the column grows downward.
• Kings fill empty columns. When you clear a column completely, the only thing you can move into that empty space is a King — or a valid sequence headed by a King.

You can move a single card or an ordered sequence. If several face-up cards already form a proper run — in sequence and alternating colors — you can pick up that whole group and drop it onto a column whose bottom card is one higher and the opposite color. Whenever you move a card off the top of a column and reveal a face-down card below, flip it face-up — you've just gained new information and a new option.

Cards can also go up to the foundations at any time, one rank at a time, as soon as they fit (the matching Ace first, then the 2, and so on).

Using the stock

Sooner or later the tableau stalls and nothing on the board can move. That's what the stock is for. Click it to turn cards into the waste pile, where the top card becomes playable — you can send it to a foundation or onto a tableau column under the normal rules.

Keep drawing through the stock to surface options you don't currently have. When the stock runs out, you recycle the waste back into a fresh stock and go through it again. Depending on the variant you're playing, you'll either flip one card at a time (easier, more control) or three at a time (harder, fewer reachable cards). Either way, the stock is a renewable source of moves — use it whenever the tableau goes quiet.

Winning tips

Klondike rewards patience and a little planning. A few habits that consistently help:

• Free your face-down cards first. The face-down cards in the tableau are locked information. Prioritize moves that uncover and flip them — every reveal opens new lines of play. A move that uncovers nothing is usually a wasted one.
• Play Aces and 2s up immediately. Aces start the foundations and 2s follow right behind, so there's almost never a reason to keep them in the tableau. Send them up the moment you see them.
• Don't auto-stack everything to the foundations. Low and middle cards can be useful in the tableau as landing spots for other cards. Move a card up only when you're sure you won't need it below.
• Think before you empty a column. An empty column is powerful — but it can only be filled by a King. Don't clear one unless you have a King (ideally one with cards to bring along) ready to move in. An empty column with no King to use it can leave you stuck.
• Look before you draw. Exhaust your safe tableau moves before turning to the stock, and try to picture a couple of moves ahead. The best players win on planning, not luck.

Your move

That's the whole game: deal the board, build down in alternating colors, feed the four foundations from Ace to King, and lean on the stock when the table goes quiet. Read the layout, free your hidden cards, and don't rush a card upward you might still need.

Now go put it into practice — start a fresh deal at Solitaire, or browse the rest of the shelf over on all games.