Most people know klondike solitaire as simply "solitaire". In this popular card game, your objective is to move all cards from the tableau (the main part of the playing board) and the stock (the place where you get new cards) to the foundation piles. In this classic game, the foundation piles are sorted by suit (e.g. hearts, spades) and in ascending order starting with the Ace card. When you get all cards onto the piles, then you win the game.
If you're playing klondike solitaire online, you only really need to worry about moving cards around, but I'll teach you how to play offline, something that can be quite rewarding.
First, you'll need one card deck. As you might expect, you'll need to shuffle it before you play (we're all so spoiled having computers take care of this for us).
You're going to need to find a table or other stable surface that will fit about 13 piles of cards. These piles come from 7 for the tableau, 4 for the foundations, 1 for the stock, and finally 1 for the discard pile (the place where you put unused stock cards).
After you have thoroughly shuffled the playing deck, you'll begin placing cards on the tableau. Here, you have two main options for how to deal the cards. Either way, your end result is going to be 7 piles of cards, the leftmost containing a single face up card, and the next having one face down card and one face up, leading to the rightmost pile, that has 6 face down cards and a single face up card.
Option #1: I'd argue this is the easiest. Start by placing 1 card face up in the left most pile (we'll call this pile #1). Next, place a single face down card in piles 2 through 7. Now, you'll move to pile #2 and start the process again: 1 face up card in pile #2 and then a single face down card for every pile in piles 3 through 7. Then, you'll repeat the process again, starting with pile #3. You repeat this process over and over until you place a single face up card in pile #7. Then you are ready to start playing.
Option #2: For this method, instead of looping through the piles, you just process each pile individually. So pile #1 gets a single face up card. #2 get 1 face down, and 1 face up. #3: 2 face down, 1 face up. And so on until pile #7, where you'll place 6 facedown cards and finish it off with a single face up card.
Regardless of the option you choose, to reiterate, here are the tableau piles you should be left with:
At this point, you'll have cards left over. These cards become the stock pile. You'll rely on the stock pile for when you have no available moves on the tableau.
So now that you've got everything setup, how do you play klondike solitaire? The objective here is to get all cards to the 4 foundation piles which are built up in ascending order (Ace, 2, 3 … King) and by suit (e.g. only hearts). So your first objective is to find Aces so you can begin building the foundation piles. If you had a lucky shuffle, you might even have some Aces available now. If so, move those to the foundation piles.
Here is where you have some flexibility in how you play. If you play with the unlimited stock redeals rule (the default on this site), you could actually go through the stock pile right now looking for all available cards to move to the foundation piles. This may be tedious, but your play style is totally up to you.
Most of the game play of a typical klondike match involves moving cards around on the tableau. Here, your goal is to build piles in descending order (King to 2) and by alternating color (e.g. black spade -> red heart -> black club -> red diamond).
Unlike some games of solitaire, here, when you have a stack of ordered cards, you may move the entire group at once. So let's say you have a pile that has a black 7 all the way down to a red 2. You then free up a red 8 somewhere on the tableau. In klondike, you're allowed to move that entire 7 -> 2 stack onto the red 8.
So what happens when you completely clear a pile on the tableau? Here, it also depends on the rules you want to use (this site lets you choose). The traditional rules say that only a King (or a pile starting with a King) may be moved onto a free space. But you can also play with the rules that allow you to move any card onto a free space. Your choice. You can even change this rule in the middle of a game if you want, so you can change up the rules if you get stuck.
Now for the rules of the stock pile. The big difference is in whether you deal 3 at a time or just 1 card at a time. Again, this site lets you choose. If you're playing by hand and dealing 3 at a time, you can also decide on how you want to deal the 3. It's hard to describe, but in one version, the 3 cards stay in the same order every time you go through stock. The other way, you deal the cards out in such a way that each group of 3 changes order every time.
In a sense, your main strategy in Klondike is to uncover all face down cards. Why? Because once you do, you've pretty much won the game. All that's left is to move all of the cards onto the foundation piles. There's no way to lose at that point.
One unconventional Klondike strategy involves moving cards out of the foundation piles. This can be the difference between a forfeit and a winning game.
Here's how it works. Let's say you've got a black 4 and a black 2 in different piles on the tableau. The only red 3 you have available is in one of the foundation piles (the other is buried face down somewhere). If your rules allow it, you simply move that red 3 out of the foundation and onto the black 4, thus allowing you to move that black 2 onto the 3 and uncovering whatever was beneath the 2.
Personally, I tend to only use this strategy late in a game, basically when there are no other moves left. If you haven't tried it before, next time you get stuck, try it. Who knows, it might become your secret weapon.
Klondike is definitely the classic solitaire and has earned its place as one of the most popular (if not the most popular) solitaire games out there.
We hope you enjoy playing!
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