Klondike Solitaire Rules & Win Rate
Klondike is the game most people picture when they hear the word “solitaire.” It has been the default card game on Windows since 1990, and estimates suggest billions of games are played each year worldwide. Yet despite its familiarity, many players don’t know the actual rules in full — or how unlikely a typical win really is.
The Setup
A standard 52-card deck is shuffled and dealt into seven tableau columns. Column 1 gets one card, column 2 gets two cards, and so on up to seven. Only the top card of each column is dealt face-up; the rest are face-down. The remaining 24 cards form the stock pile in the top-left.
Four empty foundation piles sit in the top-right, one for each suit. The goal is to move all 52 cards onto the foundations, building each suit from Ace up through King.
Core Rules
Cards on the tableau are built in descending rank and alternating color — a red 7 can only go on a black 8. Only face-up cards can be moved. A face-down card is revealed automatically when the face-up card on top of it is removed. Empty tableau columns may only be filled with a King (or a sequence starting with a King).
Clicking the stock turns over cards to the waste pile. In Draw 1, one card is turned at a time. In Draw 3, three cards are turned but only the top one is playable. When the stock is exhausted it can be reset by clicking it again — unlimited resets in Draw 1, but each reset counts against you in Vegas scoring.
Cards move to the foundation automatically (or on double-click) once their suit's Ace is placed and they are the next rank in sequence. You win when all four foundations each hold 13 cards (Ace through King).
Win Rate: What the Numbers Say
Klondike is infamously hard to analyze because it involves hidden information — face-down cards you haven't seen yet. With perfect play and full knowledge of the deck, roughly 82% of Draw 1 deals are theoretically winnable. In practice, human players with no knowledge of face-down cards win around 43% of Draw 1 games.
Draw 3 is considerably harder. Theoretical winnability sits near 79%, but realistic win rates for human players hover around 11–15%. The three-card cycling means cards can become unreachable for many cycles, and the limited resets in Vegas mode add a hard constraint that drops the rate further.
These numbers explain why Klondike feels satisfying but never trivial — there will always be unwinnable deals, and not every loss is your fault.
Scoring
Standard scoring awards 10 points per card moved to the foundation and 5 points per tableau-to-tableau move that turns over a face-down card. Time bonuses apply in timed mode. Vegas scoring is more stark: you start with a −$52 wager and earn $5 for each card placed on the foundation. A perfect game returns $208 net.
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