Arkadium's Classic Solitaire

Controls

Mouse on a computer, touch on a phone or tablet. Some games also take the arrow keys or the letter keys, and the game will say so when it starts.

Take it with you

Scan to open Arkadium's Classic Solitaire on your phone.

Classic Solitaire is the game most people simply call Solitaire, the one that came with every computer for thirty years. Seven columns, a stock pile, four empty foundations, and one goal: get every card home, ace to king, one suit at a time.

What keeps it alive is that the deal decides more than you think. Somewhere between a fifth and a third of games cannot be won at all, no matter how well you play, and you usually cannot tell which kind you have until you are halfway in. Learning to read that early is most of the skill.

This is Arkadium's version, with a clean board, unlimited undo and a running score.

How to play Arkadium's Classic Solitaire

Seven columns are dealt in front of you, the last card of each face up. Four empty foundations sit at the top.

Build the foundations upward by suit, starting with the ace and finishing with the king.
Build the columns downward, alternating red and black. A red six goes on a black seven.
Move a whole run of cards at once by dragging its highest card.
Turn the stock when you have nothing left on the board. It cycles as many times as you need.
Only a king can move into an empty column, so think before you clear one.

The game is won when all fifty two cards are on the foundations. Undo is unlimited, so nothing is ever fatal.

Tips and strategy

Turn face down cards before anything else. Every hidden card is information you do not have, and the column with the most of them is where your real problem lives.
Do not send a card to the foundation just because you can. A five you banked too early is a five that cannot hold a four next turn.
Empty a column only when you have a king ready to fill it. An empty column with no king is dead space, and dead space loses games.
Prefer the move that uncovers something over the move that tidies something. A neat board with nothing new revealed is a board that is about to stall.
When two moves look equal, take the one from the longer column. Length is where the buried cards are.
Cycle the stock once with no moves before you conclude you are stuck. People give up on winnable deals constantly.

If you like the shape of this one, FreeCell shows you every card from the start, and Klondike Solitaire is the same family with a different deal. The full solitaire collection is here.