FreeCell Solitaire
FreeCell deals the whole deck face-up into eight columns — a pure planning puzzle where nearly any deal can be won.
FreeCell Rules — How the Game Works
FreeCell puts the entire deck on the table face-up: fifty-two cards, eight columns, nothing hidden and nothing left to draw. Your task is to return every card, Ace up through King within its suit, to the four foundations. Because you always see the whole position, skill decides the outcome — exhaustive analysis of the first 1,000,000 Microsoft-numbered deals found only eight with no solution. This page covers the layout, the legal moves, and the capacity arithmetic that decides most games.
Winning FreeCell — A Practical Playbook
Nothing in FreeCell is hidden, which makes it an unusual card game: nearly every loss was preventable. That is uncomfortable and liberating at once. The eight habits below follow the arc of a real game, from the first scan of a fresh deal to the decision to start over — internalize them and your win rate stops depending on which deal you get.
FreeCell — Frequently asked
Is every FreeCell deal winnable?
Very nearly. Exhaustive computer analysis of the original 1,000,000 Microsoft-numbered deals found exactly eight with no solution — #11982 is the famous one, alongside #146692, #186216, #455889, #495505, #512118, #517776 and #781948. Everything else has at least one winning line. On StillDeck you can load any Microsoft number with the deal chip above the board or a /freecell/?deal=N link.
What makes a deal impossible?
Impossibility is always a capacity problem. Some card ends up needing, as its own prerequisites, the very cards stacked on top of it — and the combined free cells and open columns can never grow large enough to unwind the tangle. When no legal ordering of moves escapes that loop, the position is dead no matter how well you play it.
How is FreeCell different from Klondike solitaire?
Klondike hides most of the deck and feeds it to you through a stock; FreeCell shows you everything at once and hands you four holding slots instead of a draw pile. Open columns behave differently too: here any card may claim one, while Klondike reserves them for Kings. The net effect is that Klondike outcomes lean on what turns up, and FreeCell outcomes lean almost entirely on how well you plan.