You’re sitting there with a shuffled deck of cards and a lot of time. Maybe the Wi-Fi is out. Or maybe you just want to feel something tactile for once instead of staring at a glowing OLED screen. It’s funny because almost everyone knows what the game looks like—that iconic waterfall of cards—but when it comes down to the actual mechanics of how to play solitaire by yourself, things get fuzzy. People start questioning if they can move a King to an empty space or if they’re allowed to peek at the bottom of the deck.
Solitaire isn't just one game. It's a genre. But when we talk about playing alone with a physical deck, we are almost always talking about Klondike. It’s the version Microsoft made famous in the 90s to teach people how to use a computer mouse.
Honestly? It's harder than it looks.
The Setup: Making the Tableau Look Right
Don’t just throw the cards down. You need a "Tableau." That’s the fancy French word for the seven columns that make up your main play area.
You start by placing one card face up on your left. Then, place six cards face down to the right of it. Go back to the second column and put one card face up on top of the face-down card. Then, add five more face-down cards to the columns to the right. You keep doing this—one face-up card on the next column, and face-down cards on everything to its right—until you have seven columns. The first has one card; the last has seven. Only the top card of each pile should be showing its face.
The leftover cards? That’s your Stock pile. Put them off to the side. You're going to need them because, statistically, the Tableau you just built is probably a mess.
The Goal is the Foundations
The whole point of learning how to play solitaire by yourself is to get all the cards out of the Tableau and into the "Foundations." These are four empty spots, usually above your main columns. You have to build these up by suit, starting with the Ace.
Think of it like building a skyscraper. The Ace is the foundation. Then the 2, then the 3, all the way up to the King. All of the same suit. If you get all four suits from Ace to King into those Foundation spots, you win. If you get stuck and can't move anything? You lost. It happens more often than you'd think.
Moving Cards: The Red-Black Rule
This is where most people mess up. Inside the seven columns (the Tableau), you move cards in descending order and alternating colors.
If you have a Red 9 (Hearts or Diamonds), you can only place it on a Black 10 (Spades or Clubs). You cannot put a Red 9 on a Red 10. It feels counterintuitive if you're used to other card games, but this is the "engine" of Solitaire. It creates the constraints that make the game a puzzle rather than just a sorting task.
You can also move entire sequences of cards. If you have a Black 8 on a Red 9, and there’s a Black 10 somewhere else with an open spot, you can grab that 9 and 8 together and move them onto the 10.
What about the empty spaces?
Eventually, you’ll clear out an entire column. It’s a great feeling. But you can't just put any card there. Only a King can move into an empty space in the Tableau. If you don't have a King ready to go, that space stays empty, mocking you.
The Stock and the Waste: Three-Card vs. One-Card
When you run out of moves in your columns, you turn to the Stock pile. This is where different "house rules" come into play.
- The "Easy" Way: You draw one card at a time. If you can use it, great. If not, it goes to a Waste pile, and you draw the next one.
- The "Standard" Way: You draw three cards at once and flip them over. You can only use the top card of that three-card set. If you use it, the one underneath becomes available. This is significantly harder.
According to various mathematical analyses, including work by mathematicians like Persi Diaconis, the "Draw 3" version is much more restrictive. In fact, some deals are mathematically impossible to win from the very first second. That’s just the nature of the beast.
Common Pitfalls and "Illegal" Moves
Let’s talk about cheating. Since you’re playing by yourself, nobody is going to arrest you for peeking under a card. But if you want to actually improve, you have to stick to the constraints.
One common mistake is moving cards back from the Foundation to the Tableau. In most competitive versions of Solitaire, once a card goes up to the Foundation (the Ace-King piles), it stays there. However, some casual players allow "back-playing" to help unblock a column. If you’re playing for a high score or in a tournament setting (yes, those exist), that’s usually a no-go.
Another big one: forgetting the Ace. You cannot build a column starting with an Ace. Aces must go to the Foundation. If you have an Ace buried under five face-down cards in the middle of a pile, you are in for a bad time. You have to move everything off that pile just to get the Ace out and start its suit's foundation.
Why Does This Game Still Matter?
In 2026, where we have hyper-realistic VR and AI that can generate entire worlds, why are people still asking how to play solitaire by yourself with a dusty deck of Bicycle cards?
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It’s about "flow."
Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi famously described flow as a state of total immersion. Solitaire provides a low-stakes version of this. It’s a "solvability" puzzle. There is a specific comfort in the physical snap of the card and the logic of the alternating colors. It’s a meditative loop.
Strategy: How to Actually Win
If you just move cards randomly, you’ll win maybe 10% of the time. If you play strategically, you can bump that up significantly.
- Expose the face-down cards first. This is the golden rule. Don't worry about building fancy stacks if you have a column with five face-down cards. Focus all your energy on uncovering them.
- Don’t empty a space unless you have a King. An empty space is useless if you don't have a King to put there. You’re basically just removing a column where you could have been storing cards.
- Play your Aces and Twos immediately. These cards don't help you build sequences in the Tableau (nothing goes under an Ace), so get them out of the way and into the Foundation piles as fast as possible.
- Be careful with the 5s, 6s, 7s, and 8s. These are the "transition" cards. If you play them to the Foundation too early, you might realize later that you needed that Red 7 to hold a Black 6 that was blocking a crucial face-down card.
Variations You Might Like
If Klondike feels too stale, there are others. Spider Solitaire uses two decks and is much more complex. FreeCell is a version where almost every single hand is winnable if you're smart enough—it removes the luck of the "Stock" pile and gives you four "cells" to temporarily store cards.
But for most of us, the classic Klondike is the go-to. It’s the perfect balance of luck and logic.
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Actionable Steps to Start Your Game
To get moving right now, grab your deck and follow this sequence:
- Count your deck. Seriously. There is nothing worse than getting 15 minutes into a game only to realize you’re missing the 7 of Clubs. You need 52 cards.
- The "Long" Shuffle. Do a riffle shuffle at least seven times. Mathematicians have actually proven that seven shuffles are required to truly randomize a 52-card deck.
- Deal the 28-card Tableau. Remember: 1st pile has 1 card, 7th pile has 7.
- Scan for Aces. If any Aces are face-up, move them to the Foundation spots immediately.
- Look for the biggest pile. If you have a choice between moving a card from a pile of two cards or a pile of six, always pick the pile of six. You need to get those hidden cards flipped over.
If you hit a wall, don't just give up. Go through the Stock pile one more time. Sometimes a move you missed the first time becomes obvious once the Tableau has shifted. And if you still can't move? Scoop 'em up, shuffle seven times, and go again. That's the beauty of it. No one is watching. It's just you and the cards.