Solitaire rules: how to play Klondike, step by step

Klondike uses one standard 52-card deck, no jokers. Deal cards into seven columns, called the tableau, dealing one column at a time from left to right and adding one more card to each column as you go.

That's 28 cards dealt across the tableau. The remaining 24 cards form the stock, held face-down and set to one side. Above the tableau, leave room for four empty foundation piles, one per suit, which stay empty until an Ace of that suit turns up somewhere in play.

Every column's bottom cards start face-down and only get flipped over as the cards on top of them are cleared away, so a big part of early solitaire play is simply working down through each column to see what's hiding underneath. Longer columns, especially column 7 with its six buried cards, tend to decide whether a deal opens up quickly or stays cramped for most of the game.

One small setup detail that trips up new players: the tableau deal and the foundations are two completely separate areas of the table. Nothing gets placed on a foundation during the deal itself, no matter how tempting it is to move an exposed Ace there right away before you've had a chance to see what else the deal reveals underneath it.

Building the tableau

Cards in the tableau build downward in alternating colors: a red 6 can hold a black 5, which can hold a red 4, and so on, switching color every step down. You can move a single card, or an entire valid run of alternating-color cards already stacked in sequence, from one column onto another as long as the move keeps that alternating pattern intact at the point where the two groups meet. Once a face-down card becomes the top card of its column, because everything that was sitting on it has been cleared away, flip it face-up immediately and it becomes available to play.

Building the foundations

The four foundations sit above the tableau, one per suit, and each one builds up starting from that suit's Ace. Once a suit's Ace becomes available, whether it's sitting on top of a tableau column or has just been turned up from the stock, move it to its foundation, then add that suit's 2, 3, and every following rank in strict ascending order. Skipping a rank isn't allowed, even temporarily. Most rule sets also let you move a card back from a foundation to the tableau if doing so frees up a stuck play elsewhere, though a well-going game rarely needs it.

Working the stock pile

Whenever the tableau and foundations run out of legal moves using only what's currently visible, turn over cards from the stock into a separate waste pile next to it. Only the top card of the waste pile is playable at any given moment, so cards further down stay locked away until the ones on top of them are dealt with or played. Once the stock runs dry, some versions let you flip the entire waste pile back over and turn it into a fresh stock to cycle through again, while others cap how many times you're allowed to do that. It's worth agreeing on that detail before you start if you're keeping score or timing the game, since it materially changes how many chances you get to unstick a difficult deal.

Most casual games of solitaire have no formal scoring at all. You either clear the entire tableau onto the foundations and win, or you eventually run out of legal moves and the game ends unfinished, and that binary result is the whole point for most players.

A separate scoring convention, commonly called Vegas scoring, does exist for players who want a running number attached to each game rather than a plain win or loss. Instead of charging anything during play, it treats the whole 52-card deck as a one-time buy-in, commonly cited at a dollar a card, so $52 to play a single deal, and pays back a larger amount for every card that reaches a foundation, commonly cited at $5 a card. That gap between the buy-in and the payout is the point: moving roughly 11 cards to the foundations covers the cost of the deck, and everything beyond that is profit. Some versions of Vegas scoring also limit play to a single pass through the stock rather than letting you cycle back through it, which raises the stakes on making each stock card count. Treat Vegas scoring as an optional add-on layered on top of the base rules rather than the default way solitaire is scored, since most people playing a casual home game never touch it.

The single biggest variable in how a Klondike game feels, and in how likely it is to be winnable at all, is how many stock cards you turn over at once. Both conventions below are widely documented as standard forms of the game, not one official version and one house variant.

Digital solitaire apps often default to draw 1, since it's the friendlier version for a casual player working through a quick game, and it's the version most people picture when they picture solitaire at all. If a rulebook or a scored variant just says "solitaire" without specifying which stock convention it uses, draw 1 is the safer assumption, but draw 3 is common enough in scored and casino-style play that it's worth confirming before you deal, especially if points or money are riding on the outcome.

Beyond the draw 1 versus draw 3 choice, a handful of other table-agreement rules change how forgiving a game of solitaire feels, and none of them is more "official" than the others.

Groups that play for fun rather than for a formal score tend to gravitate toward the more relaxed end of this table, unlimited re-cycling plus the any-card rule, since both changes cut down on the frustration of an early deal locking up before you've had much chance to work it.