Solitaire Strategy Guides

SolitaireBay has strategy guides for four games: Klondike, Spider, FreeCell and Pyramid. Each guide lists its decision rules in the order you should check them, works through examples, names the mistakes that cost the most deals and ends with a checklist for the table.

Start with the game you play most. Klondike is the one most people mean by solitaire, so its guide is a sensible first read if the game is new to you. The FreeCell guide is about planning, since every card is visible from the first move. Pyramid has no building, only kings that go alone and pairs that add up to 13, and its guide shows how to keep track of the ranks that can still meet. In Spider the aim is to keep the board open, and the guide covers when to deal the stock and how to order your runs.

The guides that quote how often a deal can be won use our own solver’s results and say so. The glossary explains words that may be new to you, and the rules of every game are on the how to play page.

The four guides

• Klondike strategy: which move to try first, when to empty a column and how to use the stock in the draw-one game.
• Spider strategy: when to deal the stock, how to open columns and how to order your runs.
• FreeCell strategy: how to count the cards you can move at once, when to use a cell and which column to empty.
• Pyramid strategy: how to track the ranks that add up to 13, which cards to clear first and how to plan around the redeal.

Play while you read

Each guide is written for a game page with a table you can use as you read: Klondike, Spider, FreeCell and Pyramid. The other games have a short strategy section on their own pages, and the all games page lists them by family.