Solitaire Free

How to Play Solitaire

You probably already know the fundamentals of Solitaire if you played cards at home or had access to a computer while you were growing up. But not everybody does. If you've never played Solitaire Free before, keep reading to find out how to play this straightforward yet enjoyable card game! This short tutorial will walk you through playing traditional Solitaire step-by-step.

Basic Principles & Terminology

Let's start by going over the first four principles you need to learn about solitaire. The following image highlights these with points 1 to 4:

1. The stock pile: 24 cards have not been dealt at the beginning of the game. These cards form the stockpile at the top left of the screen.
2. The discard pile: The cards from the stockpile are dealt one by one here.
3. The four ace stacks: The cards are stacked on the four ace stacks in ascending order starting with Ace, 2, 3, 4 ... all the way to Jack, Queen and ending with a King.
4. The tableau: Solitaire is played on the tableau with a full deck of 52 playing cards, starting with 28 dealt cards that are divided into seven columns. The first column has one card placed, while each subsequent column has one additional card dealt. All cards are dealt face down in a stack except the top (or last) card of each column.

Difficulty Modes

You can select between two alternative variants of varied difficulties in this free game of solitaire. Before the game begins, you must choose one. Your choice is between:

1. Draw 1 card at a time (EASY MODE)
2. Draw 3 cards at a time (HARD MODE)

These game instructions are for the EASY MODE because this is the recommended game version for new players.

Goal of the Game

The goal of Solitaire is to move all 52 playing cards from the tableau and stockpile to the four ace stacks in the correct order. This should be done in ascending order from low to high card values, starting with Ace, 2, 3, 4 ... all the way to Jack, Queen and King. The four ace stacks correspond to the four suits of the deck (Hearts, Diamonds, Spades and Clubs). Therefore, each ace stack may only contain the same suit of cards.

Once all 52 playing cards have been correctly dealt into the four ace stacks, the game is over.

Start the Game

At the beginning of any game plan your moves by focusing on the tableau. Remember, the your goal is to move all the cards to the 4 ace stacks in the correct order, starting with the Aces. Therefore, you begin by looking to find any Aces open on the tableau. These are easy. Simply click them or drag them to one of the ace stacks. That's already a fantastic start to the game! Not only does this put the first card on the ace stack, but it also reveals a new card under the Ace or frees up an empty card column which you can fill with a new King.

Once you have placed all the available Aces in the corresponding ace stack, you continue by putting the remaining cards in order as much as possible. On the tableau you proceed to make ordered piles by placing each card ontop of another card with a value one point higher than the card itself. Note, that this can only be done in alternating colors: red, black, red, black, etc.. meaning that red cards can only be placed below black cards and vice versa. For example, you can place a red 4 below a black 5, or a black Queen below a red King.

Next, we turn our attention to the stockpile. Click it to reveal the first new card. Check if you can either place this card somewhere on the tableau, or directly into one of the ace stacks. If the new card is a King, you can choose to place it into any empty column that you may have to start a fresh stack on the tableau. You can click the stock pile as many times as you like to reveal more cards, and you can go through the stockpile as many times as you wish.

Finally, keep repeating the steps above while remembering that the goal is to 1) reveal all covered cards and 2) sort them all in a way that allows you to move all 52 playing cards in ascending order from Ace, 2, 3, 4 ... Jack, Queen and finally to the King inside the 4 ace stacks to win the game.

Scoring the Game

This Solitaire game is scored using the classic Microsoft scoring system. Points are scored as follows:

• 5 Points: Move a card from the discard pile to the tableau.
• 5 Points: Turn over a covered card.
• 10 Points: Move a card from the discard pile or tableau to one of the ace stacks.
• 15 Points: Move a card from the tableau to one of the ace stacks and immediately unlock a covered card.

Finally, you can also choose to disregard the point scores, and instead score yourself by only looking at the time it takes you to complete a game successfully. Try to improve by reducing the time it takes you to complete a game.

Solitaire with 3-Card Draw

The rules above apply to both game difficulties: the 1-card draw as well as the 3-card draw. The difference being that when you click the stockpile, 3 cards are revealed and only the top card is immediately accessible. The other two will have to be unlocked by smart and clever gameplay. This makes this version a lot more difficult than the 1-card draw version recommended for beginners.

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