Klondike Solitaire Odds: Is Every Game Winnable?

Few card games are played as often as Klondike, the classic solitaire with seven columns and a stock pile. Almost every player eventually asks the same question after a run of losses: can every game actually be won? The short answer is no, but the full answer is more interesting, and it explains how to win more often.

Two different questions

People usually mix up two questions:

1. How many deals can be won? This is about the cards themselves: is there any sequence of moves that clears the table?
2. How often will I win? This is about you: you cannot see the face-down cards, so you sometimes choose a move that turns out wrong.

The first number is fixed for a given set of rules. The second depends on your skill, and it is always lower.

How many Klondike deals are winnable?

Researchers have studied this with programs that can see every card (a version sometimes called “thoughtful” solitaire). Their results suggest that roughly 80% or more of deals can be won with perfect play, with the exact figure depending on whether you draw one or three cards and how many times you may go through the stock.

The rest are genuinely lost from the start. A simple example: every card you can reach at the beginning is a red card that has nowhere to go, and no Ace is showing. More often, a key card is buried under cards that can never be moved without blocking something else.

What about ordinary play, where you cannot see hidden cards? Here the honest answer is that nobody knows the exact odds. Mathematicians have described this as one of the open problems of applied probability, because the number of possible deals and choices is far too large to work out exactly.

Why Draw 3 is so much harder

In Draw 1, you turn the stock over one card at a time, so on each pass you can reach every card. In Draw 3, you turn three cards and can only play the top one. A card in the middle of a group of three may stay out of reach for several passes, or forever if the groups never shift.

Rule	What you can reach	Typical difficulty
Draw 1, unlimited passes	Every stock card, every pass	Easiest
Draw 3, unlimited passes	Every third card, shifting as you play	Much harder
Draw 3, limited passes	Every third card, a few times only	Hardest

On this site both Draw 1 and Draw 3 allow unlimited passes through the stock, so the only question is which cards you can reach, not how many times.

What actually decides your win rate

If 80% or more of deals can be won but most players win far less often, the gap comes from decisions. These are the habits that close it.

Turn over face-down cards first

Every face-down card is information you need. When you have a choice, make the move that reveals a hidden card, and prefer the column with the most hidden cards, because those columns are where Kings and Aces get trapped.

Do not empty a column without a King

An empty column can only take a King. Emptying one early, with no King ready to move in, wastes a space you may need later. Wait until a King (ideally with a run under it) can use it.

Hold back on the foundations

Moving Aces and Twos up is always good. Higher cards are sometimes more useful on the table, where they can hold a lower card of the other colour. A black 6 sent up too early can leave a red 5 with nowhere to go.

Choose which red or black card to move

When two cards of the same rank and colour could move to a spot, pick the one that frees a face-down card or empties a useful column. It sounds small, but these choices decide many games.

Use the stock with a plan

In Draw 3, think before cycling: playing a card from the waste changes which cards come up on the next pass. Sometimes leaving a card in the stock is better, because it keeps a useful card on top next time.

Does luck matter at all?

Yes: some deals are lost before you start, and in others the card you need is hidden under the one column you did not dig into. But over many games, skill matters far more than most players expect. Two players dealt the same thousand games will finish with very different records.

A quick way to raise your odds

1. Play Draw 1 until you win most games, then move to Draw 3.
2. Before each move, ask whether another move would reveal a hidden card.
3. Only empty columns when a King is ready.
4. Send low cards up at once and high cards only when they are no longer needed.
5. Use undo to check what would have happened, and learn from it.

Your own win rate is the number that matters, and it is the one you can change. Shared deal links on this site let you replay the same game, which is a good way to test whether a different first move would have won.