Klondike rules, the strategy that wins more deals, and how scoring works
Klondike is the solitaire - the single-player card game that shipped with Windows and taught a generation to drag and drop. A standard 52-card deck is dealt into seven tableau columns, and your mission is to sort the entire deck onto four foundation piles, one per suit, from ace up to king. It's a game of sequencing and patience: every deal is a small logistics puzzle where the order of your moves matters far more than beginners realize.
Not every deal can be won - but far more are winnable than most players manage. The gap between a casual player and a strong one isn't luck; it's a handful of habits about which moves to make, which to delay, and which tempting moves to refuse entirely.
Every face-down card is information and material you don't have yet - flipping one is almost always worth more than any other move. When choosing between two possible plays, take the one that turns over a hidden card, and prefer digging into the columns with the most face-down cards (the ones dealt on the right), since they're the biggest bottleneck to finishing. A move that just shuffles face-up cards between columns accomplishes nothing unless it unlocks a flip.
An empty column is the most powerful space on the board, so don't fill it reflexively. Only a king can go there, and choosing the wrong color king can strand you: if your buried queens are both red, an empty column filled with a red king can never receive them. Look at which queen (and jack) you can actually get before committing. And sometimes the strongest play is leaving the column empty for a turn - it's a free parking space for maneuvering long sequences.
It feels wrong, but sending cards up too eagerly loses games. Tableau building needs low cards: a black 5 sent to the foundation can no longer hold your red 4, and that red 4 might be the card that unburies a column. The safe exceptions: aces and twos should always go up immediately - they're nearly useless in the tableau and never worth holding. Beyond that, a good rule of thumb is to keep foundations roughly even and avoid promoting a card more than two or three ranks above its counterparts while tableau work remains.
Make every useful tableau move before flipping stock cards, since each tableau change can make previously useless waste cards playable. When a stock card is playable, pause before grabbing it - taking it changes which card the waste shows next time through, and on limited-redeal rules that ordering can decide the game.
Analysis of Klondike suggests roughly 80% of deals are theoretically winnable with perfect information, yet typical players win far fewer - the difference is decision quality, not the shuffle. Some deals are provably dead (for example, all four of a rank buried under immovable stacks with no way to dig), but most "hopeless" positions are really the result of one greedy move ten turns earlier.
That's what unlimited undo is for. Using undo isn't cheating - it's how you learn. When you flip a stock card or reveal a tableau card and realize a different order would have worked, step back and replay the sequence. Treat undo as a lens for seeing the consequences of move order; over time you'll need it less because you'll spot the traps before stepping in them. If you prefer a purist run for a leaderboard score, just note that undos typically cost you points.
Solitaire on PlayVersusAI is a solo game with a best-score leaderboard. Scoring rewards efficient, purposeful play: you earn points for moving cards to the foundations and for revealing face-down tableau cards, while recycling the stock and leaning on undo eats into your total. That means the leaderboard measures exactly the skills this guide teaches - players who flip hidden cards early, keep the foundations balanced, and win in fewer wasted moves post the biggest numbers.
To push your best score higher: finish the game (the win itself is worth more than any single move), minimize aimless shuffling between columns, and try planning two or three moves ahead before touching anything. Sign in to save your best score and see how you stack up against other players on the site leaderboard.
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