Playing solitaire

Solitaire is a card game for one person, played with an ordinary pack of cards. It is often called patience. The best-known version is Klondike, and the notes below start with that.

Setting out the cards

Bicycle Cards' rules use one pack of 52 cards. Kings rank highest and aces lowest.

You deal seven piles in a row, and together they make the tableau. The first pile has one card, the second has two, and so on up to seven cards in the last pile. Only the top card of each pile is face up.

The 24 cards left over form the stock, placed face down above the tableau. Space is kept for four foundations, one for each suit. At the start, the foundations and the waste pile are empty.

The aim of the game

You win by moving the whole pack onto the four foundations. Each one starts with an ace and is built up in its own suit, from ace to king. When you uncover an ace, it goes onto one of the foundations.

Moving cards on the tableau

In Klondike, you build the tableau downwards, in alternating colours. A black nine can go on a red ten, for example.

You can move a whole run of cards in order from one pile to another. When you uncover a face-down card, you turn it over and it comes into play.

An empty pile is called a space. Only a king can fill it. Moving a king into a space can uncover a face-down card in the pile it came from.

The stock, and drawing one or three

When you run out of moves, you turn cards over from the stock onto the waste pile. The top card of the waste can go onto the tableau or a foundation.

The usual rules turn the stock three cards at a time. When the stock is empty, you can turn the waste pile over and go through it again.

An easier version turns one card at a time. Some versions of that game allow only two goes back through the stock.

Three other games to try

Choosing a free game to play safely

The National Cyber Security Centre advises people to install games only from official sources and app stores. It also warns about messages, from another player or in an email, offering an upgrade or a freebie with a download link.

The same guidance suggests turning on automatic updates for your phone or computer. If a game asks you to make an account, it suggests a strong password that you use nowhere else.

PEGI, the Pan European Game Information age rating system, adds a note to any game where players can spend real money inside it. Those purchases can include an upgrade that removes the adverts. From June 2026, PEGI rates a newly submitted game with paid random items at 16 or above. These are items the buyer pays for without knowing what they will get.

Get Safe Online suggests checking a game's PEGI rating before a child plays it. It also suggests keeping your payment card details away from children, because extras bought inside a game can cost a lot.

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