Baker's Solitaire: short games, strict rules

Baker's Solitaire looks like FreeCell: all 52 cards face up in eight columns, four free cells, four foundations. Two rules make it a very different game. You build down in the same suit, not alternating colours, and on this site only a King can go into an empty column.

Those rules make Baker's quick when it goes well and hopeless when it does not. Our solver settled every one of 10,000 deals, and the winning routes were short: 39.1 moves on average, a good third fewer than FreeCell's 62.2. But only 31.8% of deals could be won at all.

So Baker's is a game for a quick session with a firm rule of thumb: look hard at the deal first, and if it cannot be done, deal again.

Baker's Solitaire at a glance

Every deal got a firm answer, so there is no "undecided" column here. For the classic rule, our 76.0% sits right next to the published 75.053% from Blake & Gent (2026), which tells us the solver is doing its job.

Baker's Solitaire rules on solitaire-online.nz

• Deal. Eight columns of 7, 7, 7, 7, 6, 6, 6 and 6 cards, every card face up.
• Columns. A card goes on the next card up in the same suit: the 8 of hearts on the 9 of hearts.
• Free cells. Four, each holding a single card.
• Empty columns. Only a King, or a run starting with a King, may be placed in one.
• Moving runs. Runs are moved using your empty free cells. Empty columns do not add to the size of run you can move.
• Foundations. Build each suit from Ace up to King.

Why the games are short

Same-suit building means every card has exactly one place it can go in the columns, not two. That leaves far fewer choices, so the winning route is short and direct. It also means that when the one place you need is buried, there is no second option to fall back on. That is where the 68.2% of impossible deals come from.

Playing for a quick win

Find the Kings before you move

An empty column is only useful here if a King can go into it. Before you clear a column, know which King is going there and how many moves it will take to free it.

Watch for a suit buried under itself

If a high heart sits on top of a low heart in the same column, that column will need free cells to untangle. Two or three of those in one deal usually means the game cannot be won.

Do not waste cells early

With only four cells and empty columns that take Kings alone, your cells are almost all the room you have. A card parked in a cell in the first ten moves is often still there at the end.

Know when to deal again

About two deals in three are impossible under this site's rules. There is no shame in a quick look, a few tries with Undo, and a fresh deal.

Any device, any time

Baker's Solitaire runs in any modern browser on phone, tablet or computer. Nothing to install and no account to create. Tap or drag cards, zoom in if you need bigger cards, and use Hint, unlimited Undo, Restart and Auto Play whenever you like. Your move count and time for the current game are on screen. You can mute the sound, go fullscreen, or change the table colour.

What a Baker's session looks like

Because only about a third of deals can be won here, a Baker's session tends to be a few quick deals rather than one long game. You look at the layout, try an opening, and within a few minutes you usually know whether the deal is going anywhere.

The signs of a doomed deal are easy to spot once you know them: several low cards sitting under higher cards of the same suit, and Kings buried deep with no way to reach them. When you see those, a fresh deal is often the sensible move.

When a deal does come good, it comes good quickly. The solver's winning routes averaged 39.1 moves, fewer than FreeCell's 62.2. A tidy win in under forty moves is one of the most satisfying things in solitaire.

How we did the research, step by step

The solitaire-online.nz team ran this study in September 2026 to see how Baker's Solitaire on this site compares with the version described in books, and how long a win takes.

1. We began with this site's game code. The game here builds down in suit and lets only Kings into empty columns, and empty columns do not count when moving runs. Classic Baker's Game lets any card fill an empty column, so we tested both.
2. The game as a program. We wrote both rule sets into the same program. A separate brute-force search re-checked deals 1 to 5 and gave the same answers.
3. Numbered deals. 10,000 deals under this site's rules and 2,000 under the classic rule, each from a numbered seed so the test can be repeated exactly.
4. A solver. All cards are face up in Baker's, so the solver sees what you see. It always explores the most promising position next.
5. The run. Each deal was allowed up to 200,000 positions. Every single deal finished inside that limit with a clear yes or no.
6. A published check. Under the classic rule we got 76.0%. Blake & Gent, 2026 report 75.053% from 10 million deals. The two agree.
7. Error bars. A 95% range is the band the answer would fall in 19 times out of 20 if we started over with new deals. For this site's rule, the share of winnable deals is 30.9% to 32.8%.
8. Limits. The 39.1 moves is the first route the solver found, not the shortest possible one. And our solver does not use the site's option of taking a card back from a foundation.

The technical side

Baker's runs in the same Python 3.11 module as FreeCell, freecell.py, switched to same-suit building and Kings-only empty columns. The solver is a best-first search that ranks positions by how many cards are left to go home and how many sit on lower cards, keeps a record of positions already visited, and makes foundation moves automatically only when they are provably safe. The shared runner.py spread the 10,000 deals across 19 processes on a 20-core machine, and the run took about 16 minutes. The classic-rule run of 2,000 deals took about 3 minutes.

For the 95% ranges we used Wilson score intervals. An AI assistant, Claude by Anthropic, helped write and check the code and draft this page. The figures are not the AI's: each one is the output of the program, checked by the team against the published study.

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

Short answers before your next deal

How can I tell early that a deal is hopeless?

Look for low cards trapped under higher cards of the same suit in several columns at once, and for Kings you cannot reach. Two or three such tangles, with only four free cells to untangle them, usually spell trouble. Our solver found that 68.2% of deals under this site's rules cannot be won at all, so a quick fresh deal is often the smart play.

How long does a game of Baker's take?

Winning routes found by our solver averaged 39.1 moves, which is shorter than FreeCell. Losing games can be over even faster.

Why is it so much harder than FreeCell?

Same-suit building gives each card only one home, and here only Kings can fill an empty column. Those two rules take the winnable share down to 31.8%.

Is it the same as Baker's Game in card books?

Not quite. The classic game lets any card fill an empty column, which makes about 76% of deals winnable.

Does Baker's work on a touchscreen?

Yes, in the browser. Tap a card, then tap where it goes.

Too strict? Where to go instead

FreeCell is the friendlier cousin. Golf is another quick one. The games page lists the rest of the collection.