♠What this guide is, and what solitaire is
Solitaire is the English-language name for a family of single-player card games built around the same basic loop: arrange a shuffled deck, move cards according to the rules of the particular game, and try to reach a winning position. The word "solitaire" covers well over a hundred documented variants, and estimates of how many obscure or regional patiences have ever been played run into the several hundreds. Despite the variety, almost every solitaire game you will ever encounter descends from one of seven structural families, each with its own rhythm, skill profile, and kind of satisfaction.
We wrote this guide as the master reference for our network. If you have ever wondered why FreeCell feels so different from Klondike, why Spider suddenly turns brutal at four suits, why Pyramid and TriPeaks look similar but play nothing alike, or where on earth a game called Accordion came from, this page is the single document that explains it. We link out to every game page we publish, so you can treat this guide as a table of contents for the rest of the site. We keep the explanations short where we can and deep where a topic deserves it.
The reason so many variants exist is partly historical and partly structural. Historically, patience was a parlor pastime that invited endless house-rule tinkering; every new collection published in the nineteenth century added fresh games invented by its author. Structurally, solitaire is a thin set of primitives (a deck, columns, foundations, a stock, a waste, and a handful of reserve positions) that can be recombined in an almost unlimited number of ways. Change one parameter — suit-matching, the number of cells, the direction of foundation building — and you have a new game with a meaningfully different feel. That is why the canon keeps growing.
♥The seven families of solitaire
Classifying solitaire by family is more useful than classifying it by era, region, or even deck count. Families share mechanics, which means they share the skills that transfer between them. A player who is strong at FreeCell has a head start in Baker’s Game and Eight Off because the underlying cascade-with-reserves structure is identical. A player who loves Pyramid will pick up Monte Carlo in minutes. Below are the seven families we use across the network.
We deliberately avoid classifying by deck count or hidden-card count because those axes cut across families without explaining anything. Forty Thieves and Spider both use two decks, but they play nothing alike. Klondike and Yukon both hide most cards at the start, but their strategies diverge at the second move. Mechanics are the right organizing principle; the deck count and the hidden-card count are secondary.
1. Cascade (Tableau-building) games
Cascade games use tall columns that you build downward, often by alternating color. The classic examples are Klondike, FreeCell, Yukon, and Canfield. The skill is long-term column planning: deciding which cards to bury, which to keep free, and how to time your foundation plays. Cascade games have the longest average game length because every move affects the next ten.
2. Open-information games
Open-information solitaires deal every card face-up at the start. There is no stock pile, no hidden row, nothing you cannot see. FreeCell is the most famous, Baker’s Game and Eight Off are close cousins, and Beleaguered Castle strips out the free cells entirely. These are the skill-heavy games: luck is almost eliminated, so losses always trace back to a specific mistake. We think of them as the chess of solitaire.
3. Spider-type (same-suit sequence) games
Spider-type games ask you to build descending runs of the same suit directly in the tableau, then remove a full King-to-Ace sequence once it is assembled. Spider Solitaire is the template, and Scorpion is its closest mainstream cousin. The tension in these games comes from managing partial sequences: you build across suits to make progress, then have to untangle yourself when the stock deals new cards on top. The difficulty scales enormously with suit count.
4. Pair-matching games
Pair-matching solitaires clear cards by finding pairs that satisfy an arithmetic or rank rule. In Pyramid, you pair cards that sum to thirteen. Monte Carlo pairs same-rank neighbors on a grid, and Gaps asks you to chain same-suit sequences by moving cards into open positions. These games have quick turns, low setup time, and a bright feedback loop. They are the best solitaire for five-minute breaks.
5. Discard-sequence games
In discard-sequence games you remove cards from a tableau onto a single waste pile, following a simple rule about which cards may follow which. Golf Solitaire uses one-rank-up or one-rank-down, TriPeaks uses the same rule on a three-peak layout, and Aces Up discards based on same-suit ranking. These are the fastest games in the solitaire canon; the average round finishes in two to four minutes.
6. Compression games
Compression games start with the deck spread out and try to collapse it into as few piles as possible. Accordion is the archetype: all fifty-two cards sit in a row, and you stack matches one or three spots to the left until the whole row compresses into a single pile. These games feel different from the others because the geometry of the layout changes with every move. Most compression games have brutally low win rates.
7. Clock and chance games
The seventh family is a loose one: games where the player makes few or no strategic decisions and the deal decides the outcome. Clock Solitaire is the purest example, a dealing ritual that resolves itself. Calculation sits on the edge of this family: it has real decisions, but the arithmetic feels mechanical. We include this family for completeness, because at least a handful of popular solitaires belong to it.
These seven families cover roughly ninety-five percent of the solitaire games you will ever encounter. The remaining five percent are hybrids, novelty designs, or regional oddities that combine mechanics in unusual ways. We cover several of those hybrids in the deep-cuts section below, because the hybrids tend to be where the real creativity in solitaire design lives.
♦Choosing your first solitaire game
The right first solitaire depends on what you want out of the session. People come to solitaire for very different reasons, and we think the single most common mistake beginners make is picking the game their grandparents played instead of the game that fits them. We sorted the most common player profiles below with a specific recommendation and a short reason why.
You want the classic experience.
Start with Klondike. It is the game almost everyone means when they say "solitaire," it is on every operating system ever made, and the rules are ingrained in popular culture. Win rates sit around thirty percent, so you will lose often enough to stay curious. Once you have a few wins, try draw-3 to add depth.
You want to win, and win often.
Go straight to FreeCell. It has an approximately eighty-two percent win rate with competent play and roughly ninety-nine percent of deals are solvable, so the game rewards patience with real results. FreeCell is also the best teacher in solitaire because every loss is yours to own. Our rules primer and beginner guide are the fastest paths into the game.
You want something fast.
Pick TriPeaks or Golf. Both finish in two to four minutes, both have a pleasing chain-combo rhythm, and both are forgiving enough for a coffee break. TriPeaks has the higher win rate and a more distinctive layout; Golf has the slight edge in simplicity.
You want a long session that absorbs your attention.
Choose Spider Solitaire at 2-suit for your first runs, then graduate to 4-suit. Spider games commonly last fifteen to thirty minutes with dozens of meaningful decisions per hand. The game rewards planning over improvisation and is easier to love once you learn to value empty columns.
You want to learn strategy from scratch.
Start with Baker’s Dozen. All cards are visible, there is no stock, and the win rate is high enough that you will see real improvement as you learn. Move on to FreeCell once you are comfortable thinking three moves ahead. This progression builds pattern recognition faster than jumping into Klondike first.
You want something beautiful and calm.
Try La Belle Lucie or Flower Garden. Both are old French patiences with layouts that feel visually different from the Klondike-descended canon. They are slower, they reward quiet attention, and they are good companions for evenings when you want cards to feel more like a meditation than a puzzle.
You want something different every session.
Use our games index and rotate. Solitaire players who only play one variant miss out on the real pleasure of the genre, which is that each game rewards a slightly different kind of attention. One evening of FreeCell, one of Spider, one of Pyramid, and one of Calculation will teach you more about card games than a year of pure Klondike.
♣Difficulty and skill progression
Solitaire has a real skill ladder. A beginner who sticks with the games below in order will develop the reading, planning, and counting habits that transfer across every other variant on the network. We recommend this progression when we train new players at the network, and we see the same trajectory recur in casual players who teach themselves.
- Stage 1 — Beginner: TriPeaks, Golf, and Klondike. Learn the card ranks, the four suits, the up-and-down pair relationships, and the habit of scanning the whole board before making a move.
- Stage 2 — Advancing beginner: Easy FreeCell, Baker’s Dozen, and 1-suit Spider. Learn to plan two or three moves ahead, recognize stuck positions, and understand column parity.
- Stage 3 — Intermediate: FreeCell, Yukon, and 2-suit Spider. Develop an intuition for hidden-card risk, foundation timing, and cell usage discipline.
- Stage 4 — Advanced: Baker’s Game, Eight Off, Seahaven Towers, and 4-suit Spider. Build multi-move sequences under tight constraints, and learn to count remaining moves.
- Stage 5 — Expert: Forty Thieves, Beleaguered Castle, Cruel, and Scorpion. These punish sloppy thinking; expect low win rates, long sessions, and extremely satisfying victories.
See our difficulty ranking for a full breakdown of every game on the network with win rates and skill-vs-luck decomposition.
One note on this ladder: the stages are about skill acquisition, not enjoyment. Plenty of experienced players spend their whole solitaire lives on TriPeaks or Klondike because those games deliver exactly the kind of relaxation they want. Nothing requires you to progress. If you love stage-one games, stay there. The ladder is for players who want to get better, not for players who already have what they came for.
♠Rules that change across variants
Solitaire rules are not standardized. Different sources, regions, and digital implementations disagree, and the differences are larger than most players realize. A handful of rule axes explain almost all of the variation you will see in the wild. We break them down below because understanding these axes makes it faster to learn any new variant.
Foundation direction
Most games build foundations upward from Ace to King. Some, like Bisley, run foundations in both directions simultaneously. Golf has no foundations at all; cards leave the tableau onto a single waste pile. A few variants let you build down on the foundations (notably La Belle Lucie in some rule sets).
Tableau building: same suit vs alternating color
Klondike and FreeCell build down in alternating colors. Baker’s Game, Eight Off, and Spider build down in the same suit, which makes them harder because legal sequences are rarer. Bristol and Flower Garden build regardless of suit, which sounds easier but often leads to tangled piles.
Stock, waste, and redeal policies
Some games have no stock pile at all (FreeCell, Baker’s Dozen, Yukon). Some have a stock with unlimited cycling through the waste (Klondike draw-1 in classic rules). Some limit redeals to three or even one (classic Canfield). Cruel has unlimited order-preserving redeals, which feel generous and are actually a trap. Always check this axis before starting a new variant; it dominates the feel of the game.
Column-emptying restrictions
Empty columns are extremely valuable in every cascade-style game, so designers frequently restrict what you can place into them. FreeCell lets you fill empty columns with any card. Klondike lets you fill only with a King. Eight Off and Seahaven Towers restrict empty columns to Kings only, which makes empty columns much harder to use and much more valuable to protect.
King placement rules
Related: King-only fills versus free fills. This single axis is the biggest reason Eight Off feels so different from FreeCell despite their shared cascade-with-reserves skeleton. When Kings are the only legal column fill, you have to plan King movement as a separate dimension of the game.
Group-move rules and supermoves
In FreeCell the game lets you move a stack of cards at once, as long as you could have moved them one by one through the free cells and empty columns (this is the supermove rule). Forty Thieves traditionally disallows group moves entirely. Yukon allows any face-up card and everything on top of it to move as a group. This axis changes the strategic shape of cascade games more than any other.
Auto-play and foundation behavior
Digital solitaire introduced a new rule axis: how aggressively the engine should auto-send cards to the foundations. Some implementations auto-play anything that cannot possibly cause harm. Others auto-play everything, which can remove cards you needed as tableau tools. The auto-play threshold is often undocumented and materially changes the strategic feel of a game. We list auto-play behavior on every game page so players know what they are getting.
Number of decks and suit counts
Most solitaires use one fifty-two-card deck. Spider, Forty Thieves, and a handful of other variants use two decks, which roughly doubles the number of choices per hand and extends game length dramatically. Spider also shipped with a dial for suit count: one-suit Spider uses only spades, two-suit uses spades and hearts, and four-suit uses all four. That single knob turns Spider from a casual pastime into one of the hardest solitaires ever designed.
♥Playing solitaire in 2026
Solitaire has outlived almost every other medium it has ever been published in. It survived the paper-patience era, the hardback rulebook era, the Windows 3.0 era, the early web, the smartphone transition, and it is still thriving on modern browsers. In 2026 the game lives primarily on two surfaces: the browser and the mobile app. Both have advantages.
Browser solitaire loads instantly, remembers nothing when you close the tab (unless the site chooses to), and works on every device with a keyboard or touchscreen. We run browser games on this network because the friction-to-play is zero and we can iterate on the game logic in real time. Mobile apps have an edge on offline play and push reminders, which matter for habit-builders and daily-challenge players, but the download friction keeps a lot of people away.
The other 2026 shift is that solitaire has gotten far more social. Daily-challenge leaderboards, share-your-result cards, and streak tracking are now table stakes for any serious solitaire site. We publish a daily FreeCell challenge and a shareable result card because a surprising number of players want the game to have a social layer, even a light one. Daily challenges also give players a reason to return, which is good for habit formation and bad for productivity.
Accessibility is finally a design priority in solitaire. Our engines support keyboard navigation, screen reader hints, configurable card sizes, high-contrast themes, and undo-without-penalty. We publish a large-cards mode for players who need it, and we think every serious solitaire site should. The seniors guide is the best entry point if you are setting up solitaire for a family member.
Multi-device sync is the other 2026 change worth mentioning. We keep a player’s preferences and challenge progress tied to the browser, not an account, so you can start a deal on a desktop and finish it on a tablet without signing in. The tradeoff is that switching browsers loses progress; we think that is the right tradeoff for a casual-play audience.
Modern solitaire also benefits from solver research. Computer scientists have analyzed nearly every deal in FreeCell, every plausible Klondike starting position, and most Spider deals. The outputs of that research are the win-rate figures we cite throughout the network. They are the reason we can tell you that FreeCell deal number 11982 is famously unwinnable, that Klondike draw-1 has a win ceiling around eighty-two percent with perfect play, and that one-suit Spider approaches one-hundred-percent winnability. See our famous FreeCell deals page for a tour of the most notorious deals.
♦Beyond the classics
Most solitaire players cycle between four or five games their whole lives. That is a shame, because several of the finest patiences ever invented sit outside the mainstream. If you are ready to go past Klondike, FreeCell, and Spider, the games below are the ones our Editorial Team ends up recommending the most often. Each one has its own personality, and each one rewards a slightly different kind of attention than the mainstream canon.
- La Belle Lucie — eighteen fans of three cards, same-suit descending builds, two redeals that re-shuffle everything outside the foundations. A beautiful tension between conserving redeals and making progress, and one of the oldest French patiences still in common play.
- Cruel — twelve piles of four cards with unlimited order-preserving redeals. The redeals sound generous but are the game’s main source of difficulty because they are predictable but hard to visualize. Cruel is a cult favorite among serious solitaire players for a reason.
- Flower Garden — six columns of six plus a sixteen-card reserve (the bouquet). Building is regardless of suit, but the tight column count makes every move consequential. It plays like a puzzle disguised as a flower arrangement.
- Accordion — all fifty-two cards in a single row, compressed by stacking onto cards one or three positions to the left. Low win rate, entirely different geometry from any other solitaire, and absurdly replayable.
- Calculation — four foundations that build by different intervals (1s, 2s, 3s, 4s), wrapping at King. One of the most skill-intensive solitaires ever designed, and the purest test of waste-pile planning in the canon.
- Penguin — a FreeCell relative with seven columns, seven free cells, and a foundation rank set by the first card dealt. Same-rank cards begin on the foundations. Strange setup rules, very high skilled win rate, and a shockingly different feel from FreeCell.
- Bisley — the dual-direction foundation game. Aces start on their foundations, Kings get their own foundation row that builds downward, and you are working both ends toward the middle simultaneously. No stock pile, no redeals, and a distinctive feel that rewards players who like to plan from both endpoints of a sequence.
- Bristol — eight fans of three cards plus a stock that deals to three reserve piles. Building is regardless of suit, which sounds lenient until you notice how quickly the fans lock up. The reserve piles add a timing layer that turns Bristol into a genuine thinking game once you get past the first few deals.
♣Every game on the network
We publish long-form pages for every game below. Use this index as a jump-off to rules, strategy, and tips pages for each one.
♠Related guides
The full playable catalog on the network with difficulty labels and short descriptions.
A deeper classification of solitaire by mechanics, layouts, and structural properties.
Every solitaire game on the network ranked from easiest to hardest with win-rate estimates.
Cross-game strategic principles that apply to every solitaire variant you will ever play.
A documented timeline of the game from late-1700s Europe to Microsoft Windows and the modern web.
A guided introduction for first-time players with a short, opinionated reading order.
♥Pick a game and start playing
Every solitaire game on this page is playable on the network, every one has a published rules page, and every one has been tested by our Editorial Team against the implementation that actually ships in the browser. We think the single best thing you can do after reading this guide is open one of the games we recommended and play three deals. Pattern recognition in solitaire comes from reps, not from reading, and the fastest way to improve is to play.
We keep this guide updated on a rolling schedule. When we add a new game to the network, we add a link here. When we update strategy advice on a spoke page, we keep this pillar aligned. When a rule variant changes (because a digital implementation diverged from tradition, or because a researcher published new solvability data), we revise the Rules That Change section above. Our goal is for this page to be the single most complete solitaire reference on the open web, and we treat keeping it current as one of the core responsibilities of the Editorial Team.
If you want a structured reading order instead, start with the beginner guide, then read the strategy pillar, then work through the difficulty ranking from bottom to top. That reading path takes about an hour and will give you a broader working knowledge of solitaire than most people pick up in a decade.
One last piece of advice: pay attention to the difference between a deal you lost and a deal you could not have won. A fair share of solitaire losses are unwinnable from the deal, and learning to recognize an unwinnable position is one of the most underrated skills in the game. It saves you from blaming yourself for the unfixable, and it frees you to spend your attention on the deals that actually reward it. We cover this in the strategy pillar under endgame technique.
Start a game now
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