Diplomat Solitaire: the longest game on the site
Diplomat is a two-pack game: 104 cards, eight foundations to fill, and a single trip through a 72-card stock. It starts calmly, with eight short columns of four cards, all face up. It ends the same way, with most of the cards home even when the game gets away from you.
It is also long. Our computer player's winning games took 351 moves on average, counting every card turned from the stock. That is nearly three times the length of a won Klondike game. If you have a quiet evening, Diplomat fills it nicely.
The good news is that effort pays. Our player, which never used Undo and did not know what was coming from the stock, won 47.9% of 2,000 deals, and on average it got 76 of the 104 cards onto the foundations, win or lose.
A Diplomat game by the numbers
| What we measured | Result | Games |
|---|---|---|
| Moves in a won game, including stock turns | 351.0 on average (95% range 348.4–353.6) | 957 wins |
| Cards home at the end, all games | 76.0 of 104 (95% range 74.8–77.2) | 2,000 |
| Games won, no Undo, stock unknown | 47.9% (95% range 45.7–50.0%) | 2,000 |
| Deals with an Ace playable from the opening columns | 49.2% | 2,000 |
A win is close to a coin toss for a careful player with no Undo. With Undo and a bit of planning, you should do better. We know of no published winnability figure for Diplomat, so these numbers are our own.
Diplomat rules on solitaire-online.nz
- Cards. Two full packs, 104 cards.
- Columns. Eight columns of four cards each, all face up.
- Stock. The other 72 cards. Turn them one at a time onto the waste. The top waste card can be played. When the stock is gone, it is gone: no redeal.
- Building. Build down in the columns regardless of suit, so any 6 can go on any 7.
- Single moves only. Runs do not move as a group. Every card is moved on its own.
- Empty columns. Fill a cleared column with whatever card you like.
- Foundations. Eight of them, two per suit, each built from Ace to King.
Why a Diplomat game runs long
Seventy-two cards come from the stock, and in our tally each turn counts as a move. Add the single-card moves between columns, and 104 cards to put away, and a winning game easily passes three hundred moves. None of it is hard work, and most of it is steady and pleasant, but it is not a quick game.
Making a long game go well
Keep low cards on top
Our player penalised any card sitting on a lower card, because that lower card is stuck until the higher one moves. Since you can only move one card at a time, a buried low card can cost many moves to reach.
Use empty columns as workspace
An empty column takes any card, and with single-card moves it is often the only way to reorder a pile. Our player valued an empty column highly and was slow to fill one.
Watch the waste
There is no second pass through the stock. Before turning the next card, check whether the current one can go anywhere useful, because you will not see it again once it is covered.
Two of everything helps
With two packs, each card has a twin. If one 5 of hearts is buried, the other might be free. Look for the twin before you dig.
Play on any screen
Diplomat runs in any modern browser on phone, tablet or computer, with no download and no sign-up. Tap or drag cards, and zoom in if you want them bigger. Hint, unlimited Undo, Restart and Auto Play are always there, and Auto Play is handy at the end of a long game. The game tracks your moves and time. You can switch off the sound, go fullscreen and pick your table colour.
What a Diplomat session looks like
A Diplomat game is a long, steady walk through the stock. You play what you can from the eight columns, turn a card, play what you can again, and repeat. With 72 cards to turn, most of the game happens here.
The columns start short, just four cards each, so early on there is plenty of room. The pressure builds later, when the columns fill up with cards waiting for their turn and the stock is running low. That is when empty columns and careful single-card moves matter most.
Even the games our player lost usually got well past halfway: on average 76 of the 104 cards reached the foundations. So a Diplomat session almost always ends with most of the work done, win or not.
How we did the research, step by step
The solitaire-online.nz team ran this in September 2026 to find out how long a Diplomat game really is and how much of it a careful player gets done.
- We began with this site's game code. 104 cards, eight columns of four face up, a 72-card stock turned one at a time with no redeal, building down regardless of suit, single-card moves only, and any card into an empty column.
- The game as a program. We wrote those rules into a simulation of the game.
- Numbered deals. 2,000 deals, each shuffled from a numbered seed so the test can be repeated.
- A computer player. It sees the columns and the top waste card but does not know the order of the stock, just as you don't. It never uses Undo and looks up to 300 positions ahead before each move.
- The run. All 2,000 games were played to the end.
- Published figures. We could not find a published winnability figure for Diplomat, so there is nothing to compare against. That makes these figures original, and it also means we treat them with care.
- Error bars. A 95% range is where the result would land 19 times out of 20 if we repeated the test. For the win rate it is 45.7% to 50.0%.
- Limits. Our player is a floor: it never undoes and does not plan across the whole stock. The move figure only covers won games, and it includes every stock turn.
The technical side
The simulation is written in Python 3.11 with nothing beyond the standard library, in a module called diplomat.py. The player searches up to 300 positions ahead over the column and waste moves it can see. It scores each position: 50 points for every card on a foundation, 12 for each empty column, a little for each good link, and penalties for cards resting on lower cards and for a growing waste pile. When nothing improves the score, it turns the next stock card. runner.py split the 2,000 games across 19 worker processes on a 20-core machine, and the run took about 14 minutes.
The error bars are Wilson score intervals. Claude, an AI assistant from Anthropic, helped with writing and reviewing the Diplomat code and with drafting this page. All of the numbers come from running the program; the AI did not supply any of them, and the team checked the output before publishing.
By Admin, solitaire-online.nz. Study date: 18 September 2026.
Short answers before your next deal
Can I stop halfway and come back?
Yes. The game keeps your position in the browser, so you can leave a long Diplomat game and pick it up later on the same device. With around 351 moves in a won game, including 72 stock turns, many players do exactly that.
How long does a game of Diplomat take?
Our player's wins averaged 351 moves, including all 72 stock turns. It is the longest game on this site.
Will I win many Diplomat games?
It is forgiving. Our player, with no Undo, won almost half its games and averaged 76 cards home.
Is there a second pass through the 72-card stock?
No. Diplomat on this site allows one pass through the stock.
Can I lift several cards together?
Not here: every card travels on its own. Empty columns give you room to shuffle cards around.
What else is good for a long session?
Four-suit Spider is another long game. For a shorter one afterwards, try Golf or see the games page.