Solitaire Strategy and Tips

Priorities: What a Good Move Looks Like

When several moves are legal, rank them: flipping a face-down card beats everything; a move that frees a column for a waiting King comes second; safe foundation plays third; and neutral rearrangements last. A move that achieves none of these is usually best left unmade — every unnecessary move burns flexibility.

Between two columns, dig where the most cards are buried. Uncovering one of five hidden cards is worth more than uncovering the last hidden card of a short column.

Foundation Timing

Aces and Twos can go up immediately — they are never needed in the tableau. From Threes upward, ask whether the card might still hold a red-black sequence you need. A common heuristic: keep foundations within two ranks of each other, so you never strand a card whose only resting place has gone upstairs.

Remember cards can come back down from the foundations (at a small score cost). Retrieving a Two to hold a key sequence is sometimes the winning move.

Kings and Empty Columns

Never empty a column without a plan. An empty column that only a buried King can fill is a wasted resource. When choosing which King to promote, prefer the color that your exposed Queens need, and prefer Kings that still have their Queen and Jack accessible.

Turn 3 Stock Control

In Turn 3, the stock repeats in the same groups of three each pass — until you play a card from it. Playing exactly one card from a group shifts every later group by one, surfacing previously buried cards. Cycle the whole stock once without playing, note what is buried, then decide which single play unlocks the most.

When to Concede — and When Not To

A game is dead when every hidden card sits under a sequence you cannot break and the stock offers no entry. Before conceding, check for overlooked partial-stack moves and foundation retrievals; a surprising number of “lost” games have one quiet escape. And if it truly is dead, restart the same deal — knowing the layout, you will often crack it on the second attempt.

For the fundamentals behind these ideas, see how to play Solitaire; for a daily test of your technique, try the Daily Challenge.