Read the deal before touching it
Spend the first half-minute with your hands off the cards. Find all four Aces and note how deep each one is buried; then find the 2s. An Ace lying at the bottom of a column is immediate foundation material, while an Ace under five cards defines your first excavation project. Deciding which column to dig first — before making any move at all — is the single highest-leverage decision of the game.
Keep the parking lot mostly empty
Cells you fill today are capacity you lack tomorrow: every occupied slot shrinks the largest group you can carry between columns, and a board with all four cells occupied and no empty helper columns crawls along one card at a time — frequently a terminal state.
Park a card only when you can already name the move that takes it back out. If no such exit exists within your next few plays, that park is really a slow-motion lock.
Dig toward open columns
An extra empty helper column doubles the group you can move; each extra free cell adds 2^(empty helper columns) to that capacity. Short columns are therefore gold.
Five or six cards you can distribute elsewhere purchase the strongest resource in the game, so when two candidate plays look equal, prefer the one that brings a column closer to bare felt.
Assemble runs that travel
Loose middle cards clog a board. When foundation progress stalls, spend the turn knitting stragglers into ordered alternating sequences instead: a Jack–10–9 that lives as one block occupies a single destination and relocates as a single action.
Aim to enter the endgame with the leftovers standing in a few long, clean staircases — from that shape, finishing is mechanical.
Promote to foundations on a schedule
Racing every eligible card upward feels productive and loses games. The classic trap: a black 5 goes up early, and a red 4 that needed it as a landing spot is now stranded. Before promoting a card, glance at the two opposite-color cards one rank below it — if either is still doing work in the tableau, or still buried, hold your card down as its future home.
StillDeck's finishing cascade only engages once no such conflict remains, so once it starts you can stop double-checking.
Buy something with every move
Tempo is FreeCell's hidden currency. A good play uncovers a buried card, vacates a cell, advances a foundation, or brings a column closer to empty — ideally two of those at once.
Sliding cards sideways for tidiness achieves none of them and quietly spends flexibility you will want later. When you catch yourself rearranging rather than advancing, pause and re-plan.
Let hints teach, not steer
On StillDeck the hint is backed by a solver that searches for a winning continuation, so it is a strong second opinion. Order matters: commit to your own candidate move first, then ask, and study the cases where the highlight disagrees with you. Consulted that way it sharpens your play; consulted first, it turns a perfect-information puzzle into button-pressing.
Restart without regret
Failing to find a move does not prove that a deal has no solution. Undo lets you explore another line; Restart (R) returns to the same initial deal. Use what you learned about blocked cards to compare a different plan, or choose a new game when you want another puzzle.