Klondike Solitaire: play free online, rules and winning tips

What is Klondike Solitaire?

Classic Klondike solitaire, draw 1 or draw 3. Tap a card and it goes where it fits: home to its foundation, or onto a column. Undo as much as you like.

Klondike is the game most people simply call Solitaire, or Patience in the UK. Seven columns, a stock and four foundations: you turn cards over, build down in alternating colours and carry each suit home from Ace to King. A deal takes five to ten minutes, and no two are the same.

The name is usually linked to the Klondike gold rush in Canada's Yukon at the end of the 1890s, though nobody knows exactly where the game began. It became the world's best-known patience when Windows shipped it as Solitaire in 1990. People look for it under many names: Solitaire, Patience, Klondike Draw 3, or Vegas Solitaire, a scoring variant where you "buy" the deck and earn money back for each card sent home.

On SkillXGames you choose Draw 1 or Draw 3 at the start of each deal. The move counter and the clock start with your first move, you can go through the stock as often as you like, and a tap on a foundation card brings it back to a column when you need it. Once every card is face up, Finish plays the rest home for you, and a win earns points: fewer moves and a faster time score more.

At a glance

Category

Card Room

Difficulty

Easy

Play time

5–10 min

Price

Free, in your browser, sign-up optional

How to play

Build down

On the columns, place a card on one rank higher of the opposite colour: a black 8 on a red 9. Sequences move together.

Send home

Foundations go up by suit from Ace to King. A tap sends a card home when it can go.

Draw

Tap the stock to turn 1 or 3 cards onto the waste. Empty, it turns the waste back over.

Empty columns

Only a King (with its run) fills an empty column. When every card is face up, Finish plays the rest home.

Scoring

A win scores 2,000 points in Draw 1 or 3,000 in Draw 3, minus 5 per move and 1 per second, never less than 100.

Moves and time start with your first move. Passes through the stock are unlimited, and your best score is kept in this browser.

What it trains

Planning

Choosing the move that opens the most options, not the first one you see.

Decisions with hidden information

Betting on which column hides the card you need.

Patience

Reading the whole board before you draw.

Strategy and tips

Dig where it's deepest

Before each move, find the column with the most face-down cards. The cards you are missing are most likely buried there, so work on it first.

Choose your King

When a column empties and two Kings could fill it, look at the Queens. Pick the King whose Queen of the other colour is already free, so the new column grows at once.

Send cards home with care

Aces and 2s can always go home. From the 3 up, check that no card of the other colour still needs it as a landing spot: a 5♥ on its foundation can no longer hold a black 4.

Bank on the foundations

Here you can tap a foundation card to bring it back to a column. Use it when a 6 sitting at home is the only card that can hold the 5 you need to move.

Shift the cycle in Draw 3

In Draw 3 only every third card is in reach. Playing one card from the waste changes which cards come up on the next pass, so a single waste move can unlock new ones.

Explore with Undo

Undo has no limit and puts the move counter back too, though the clock keeps running. Try a line, see what it uncovers, and step back if it leads nowhere.

Learn on Draw 1

Draw 1 shows you every stock card on each pass. Once you win most Draw 1 deals, switch to Draw 3: it's harder and a win is worth 1,000 more points.

Why play Klondike Solitaire?

Klondike is planning with incomplete information. You can't see most of the cards, so every move is a small bet on which one will open the board. Over many deals you learn to value moves that reveal something over moves that only look busy.

It's also one of the best short breaks there is: calm, familiar, and finished in a few minutes. Chasing a better score on the same rules gives a quiet sense of progress from one day to the next.

Frequently asked questions