Klondike Solitaire online: one game, about 126 moves

Klondike is the solitaire that fits into a gap in the day. You deal seven columns, turn cards from the stock one at a time, and try to build all four suits from Ace up to King. On this page it is the Turn 1 version, the gentler of the two draw modes, and it runs in the browser on whatever you have handy: the laptop at work, the tablet on the couch, or the phone while the jug boils.

We wanted to know what one game actually costs you in effort, so the solitaire-online.nz team dealt 10,000 games of Klondike to a computer player that follows the same rules as this page. When it won, it took 126.1 moves on average, counting every card turned from the stock, and it went through the stock pile 2.3 times. It won 42.3% of those deals without ever using Undo.

Real people are not far off. On solitairex.io, players finished 913,106 games of Klondike in the month before 16 July 2025 and won 44.8% of them.

A game of Klondike in numbers

So a typical won game is somewhere around 120 to 160 moves, and the quickest regular players get through one in a few minutes. That makes Klondike a sensible choice for a lunch break or a bus ride: long enough to feel like a proper game, short enough to finish before your stop.

Klondike rules on solitaire-online.nz

How the cards are laid out

Twenty-eight cards go into seven columns. The first column has one card, the second two, and so on up to seven. Each column shows just its last card face up. The remaining 24 cards sit in the stock at the top left.

Moving cards in the columns

• In the columns you build downwards in alternating colours: a red 9 on a black 10, a black 4 on a red 5.
• You can move a whole face-up run at once, as long as its top card fits where you put it.
• When you move the last face-up card off a column, the card underneath turns over.
• Only a King, or a run headed by a King, can go into an empty column.

The stock and the foundations

• Tap the stock to turn one card onto the waste pile. Its top card is always available.
• When the stock runs out you can turn the waste back over and go again, as many times as you like.
• The four foundations are built by suit from Ace to King. Fill all four and the game is won.
• A card already on a foundation may be brought back to the columns, one at a time, when that helps.

Playing on a phone, tablet or computer

Everything here runs in any modern browser, so there is nothing to install and no account to make. Pick up a game on one device and start a fresh one on another whenever you like.

• Tap or drag. On a touchscreen, tap a card and then tap where it should go. With a mouse, drag and drop.
• Zoom. Make the cards bigger on a small screen or for tired eyes. The cards are large and clear to begin with.
• Undo as often as you like, plus Hint, Restart and Auto Play to send the last cards home once the game is done.
• Your wins, time and moves are shown for the game in front of you, so you can see how your move count compares with the figures above.
• Quiet mode. Switch the sound off, go fullscreen, or change the colour of the table.

It is free, it asks for no sign-up or email, and there is no gambling and nothing to buy.

Ways to use fewer moves

Turn the hidden cards first

Our computer player's best habit was simple: whenever it had a choice, it made the move that turned over a face-down card, starting with the column holding the most hidden cards. Every hidden card you uncover is a card that can start working for you. Moving cards between face-up piles for its own sake adds moves without adding options.

Do not cycle the stock on autopilot

Winning games needed about two and a third trips through the stock. If you find yourself on a fifth or sixth lap with nothing changing, the columns are stuck, not the stock. Look for a run you can split, or a card you could bring back from a foundation, before turning more cards.

Keep an empty column for a King you can use

An empty column only takes a King. Clearing one when no King is waiting leaves a hole you cannot fill, and the moves you spent clearing it bought nothing yet.

Let Auto Play finish the job

Once every card is face up and the stock is sorted, the game is won. Auto Play saves you twenty-odd taps at the end.

What a Klondike session looks like

Put the numbers together and a game of Turn 1 Klondike has a recognisable shape. The opening is the busy part: seven face-up cards to sort, and usually a few quick plays between columns. Then the stock takes over, and you work through it card by card. In our winning games that happened a little over twice, with the middle lap usually the one where hidden cards finally come free.

The finish is short. Once every column is face up, the game is effectively decided, and Auto Play can do the rest. That is why the move count clusters so tightly: across 4,229 wins, the average barely moved, sitting between 125.8 and 126.4 moves.

If your own games run much longer than that, the usual cause is extra laps of the stock with nothing changing. If they run much shorter, you may be sending cards to the foundations early and getting stuck. Either way, the counter on the game gives you something to compare against.

And if a game stalls, that is normal too. Our computer player, which plays steadily but never goes back, lost more games than it won. With Undo, you have a real advantage over it.

How we did the research, step by step

The solitaire-online.nz team ran this study in September 2026. We were not asking whether Klondike can be won in theory. We wanted to know what a game on this page looks like: how many moves, how many trips through the stock, and how often a steady player gets there.

1. We copied the rules from this site's own game code. One card per turn, unlimited trips through the stock, alternating colours down the columns, whole runs can move, Kings only into empty columns, and one card allowed back off a foundation.
2. We rebuilt the game as a program and checked over 2,000 games (1,000 at Turn 1, 1,000 at Turn 3) that it never made an illegal move.
3. We dealt numbered games. Each shuffle comes from a numbered seed, so the same 10,000 games can be dealt again exactly. They are our own numbers, not the old Windows game numbers.
4. We picked two players. The first is a computer player that sees only the face-up cards, as you do, and never uses Undo. Its results show what steady, careful play achieves, and a thoughtful person with Undo should do better. The second is a solver that is allowed to see every hidden card. It tells us how many games could be won at all.
5. We played the games. The computer player played all 10,000 deals. The solver worked through 1,000 deals, searching up to 150,000 positions each.
6. We checked against published research. The solver proved 76.6% of games winnable and 2.1% impossible, with 21.3% left undecided, so the true share lies between 76.6% and 97.9%. That range contains the 90.48% published for Turn 1 by Blake & Gent, 2026.
7. We worked out the margin of error. A 95% range means that if we ran the whole test again with new deals, the answer would land inside that range 19 times out of 20. For the move count it is tight: 125.8 to 126.4 moves.
8. We wrote down the limits. Our player's move count is its own. People make different choices, sometimes more moves and sometimes fewer. The move count only covers games that were won, and those tend to be the smoother deals.

The technical side

The simulation is written in Python 3.11 using only the standard library. The Klondike code lives in klondike.py, and a shared runner.py hands the deals out to 19 worker processes on a 20-core machine, so many games are played at once. The computer player follows a fixed priority list: foundation moves first, then moves that turn over a hidden card, then Kings into empty columns, then cards from the waste, and only then another card from the stock. It stops after a full lap of the stock with no progress. The 10,000 games took about 14 seconds. The solver is a depth-first search that remembers every position it has already seen, so it never searches the same one twice, and it took about 17 minutes for 1,000 deals.

The 95% ranges use the Wilson score interval, a standard way of putting error bars on a percentage. Claude, the AI assistant from Anthropic, helped us write and check the Klondike code and put this page into words. None of the numbers came from the AI. Every figure is the output of the code, and the team checked the results against the published study before putting them here.

By Admin, solitaire-online.nz. Study date: 18 September 2026.

Short answers before your next deal

How long does a game of Klondike take?

The ten busiest players on solitairex.io averaged between 2 min 34 s and 7 min 32 s per game. Most people take a bit longer while they are learning, and there is no timer pushing you here.

Is 126 moves a good score?

It is a fair benchmark for a won game at Turn 1. The ten most active players on solitairex.io averaged 122 to 159 moves. The move counter on the game shows your own figure.

Why does Turn 1 feel easier than Turn 3?

Because you see every card in the stock. With the same player and the same rules, the win rate falls from 42.3% at Turn 1 to 10.6% at Turn 3.

Can I play on my phone without an app?

Yes. Open the page in your phone's browser and tap to move cards. Use the zoom control if the cards look small.

What should I try after Klondike?

Spider Solitaire with one suit is a good next step, and Golf is quick when you only have a few minutes. The full list is on the games page, and there is more reading on the blog.