Eight Off Solitaire: a short, open puzzle you can nearly always finish
Eight Off is a close relative of FreeCell with two twists: you get eight free cells instead of four (half of them already holding a card), and you must build in the same suit. Every card is face up from the start. It suits a short session well: the routes our solver found averaged only about 35 moves, and 99.89% of 10,000 deals could be won.
In other words, if a game of Eight Off beats you, the deal was almost certainly winnable. The fix is a different order of moves, not a new deal.
Eight Off in figures
| Measure | Result | Deals |
|---|---|---|
| Length of the solver's route | about 35 moves (range 35.3–35.7) | 9,989 solved deals |
| Deals that can be won | 99.89% (range 99.80–99.94%) | 10,000 |
| Deals proven impossible | 0.11% (11 deals) | 10,000 |
| Deals left undecided | 0 | 10,000 |
| At least one Ace playable straight away | 66.4% | 10,000 |
| An Ace already sitting in a starting cell | 28.1% | 10,000 |
Every one of the 10,000 deals was settled one way or the other, so the 99.89% is an exact count for our sample, not an estimate with a gap.
How Eight Off works on this site
Six-card columns and eight cells
- Eight columns of six cards, all face up.
- Eight free cells. Four of them start with one card each; the other four start empty.
- Four foundations, built up by suit from Ace to King.
Same-suit building and runs
- A card may go onto the next-higher card of the same suit: the 7♥ on the 8♥, never on the 8♠.
- Any card can go into an empty free cell.
- Only a King, with any same-suit run below it, can go into an empty column.
- Same-suit runs can move together. The longest run you can move at once is the number of empty cells plus empty columns, plus one.
Why Eight Off games are short
Two things keep the game brisk. First, same-suit building means every card has exactly one card it can sit on, so there are fewer choices to weigh. Second, the eight cells give you lots of room: even with four already filled at the start, you have four free.
The start is often friendly too. In two-thirds of our deals at least one Ace was ready to play immediately, from the bottom of a column or from a starting cell. In 28% of deals an Ace was sitting in one of the four starting cells, which is a free move on your first turn.
Finishing faster
Clear the starting cells
The four cards dealt into cells block half your space. Getting them onto the foundations or onto the right same-suit card in a column should be an early aim.
Follow each suit down
Because building is by suit, it helps to think one suit at a time. Where is the Ace? What is on top of it? Where does each of those cards go?
Save empty columns for Kings
Only a King can fill an empty column. Emptying a column with no King ready to move in wastes it.
Leave two cells spare
A run can only move as far as your empty cells and columns allow. Two empty cells lets you shift a run of three at once. Filling your last empty cell is sometimes right, but check first that the next move will give a cell back.
If you are stuck, you took a wrong turn
Only 11 of our 10,000 deals were impossible. Undo a few moves and try the other branch.
Eight Off on a phone
With just eight short columns and all cards visible, Eight Off is comfortable on a phone. Tap a card and then its destination, and use zoom if the cells feel cramped. The game counts your moves and time as you play, so you can see how close you get to the solver's 35.
Eight Off next to its FreeCell cousins
Eight Off, FreeCell and FreeCell Two Decks all deal every card face up, and our study measured all three the same way. Side by side, they make a neat ladder from short to long:
| Game | Solver's route (average) | Deals the solver won |
|---|---|---|
| Eight Off | about 35 moves | 99.89% |
| FreeCell | about 62 moves | 99.68% |
| FreeCell Two Decks | about 148 moves | 88.0% (rest undecided) |
So Eight Off is the quickest of the three to finish, and one of the most reliable to win. If you have ten minutes rather than an hour, it is the one to open. The route lengths are for the first solution our solver found, not the shortest, so treat them as a guide to how the games compare rather than a target.
How we did the research, step by step
The solitaire-online.nz team added Eight Off to its study in September 2026, to find out how often a deal can be won on this site's rules and how long a route through it is.
- Rules from the site code. Eight columns of six, eight cells with the first four pre-filled, same-suit building, Kings only in empty columns, and a run limit of empty cells plus empty columns plus one.
- A copy of the game. We wrote those rules into a program. We also made a second version that moves one card at a time, the rule used in published research, so we could compare.
- Numbered deals. 10,000 deals from seeds 1 to 10,000 for each version.
- A solver. All cards are face up, so the solver plays exactly the game you do. It always explores the most promising position next.
- A limit per deal. Up to 200,000 positions. On the site's rules, every deal was settled well within that.
- Published results. Blake & Gent (2026) put Eight Off at 99.8805% winnable with one-card moves. Our one-card version gave 99.80% solved, 0.14% proven impossible and 0.06% undecided, which agrees. The site's run moves rescue only a handful more deals.
- Error bars. The 99.89% has a 95% range of 99.80% to 99.94%.
- Limits. The 35 moves is the first route found, not the shortest possible. People will usually take more.
The technical side
Eight Off is handled by freecell2.py, a Python 3.11 module that uses only the standard library and also covers FreeCell Two Decks. The solver is a best-first search: it rates each position by the cards not yet home and the cards sitting on lower ones, expands the best one next, and keeps a record of every position it has seen so none is searched twice. Automatic foundation moves are made only when they cannot hurt. runner.py spread the work across processor cores with Python's multiprocessing, and the site-rule run of 10,000 deals took under a minute. The 95% ranges are Wilson score intervals. We had help from Claude, an AI assistant made by Anthropic, in writing and reviewing this code and drafting the page, but every figure comes from running the program.
By Admin, solitaire-online.nz. Study date: 19 September 2026.
Short answers before your next deal
How many moves does Eight Off take?
Our solver's routes averaged about 35 moves. Expect a few more yourself, as you explore.
Can every Eight Off deal be won?
Nearly. 11 of our 10,000 deals were proven impossible; the rest could all be won.
Why do some cells start full?
That is how Eight Off is dealt: 48 cards in the columns and the last four in cells.
Eight Off or FreeCell: what changes?
Eight cells instead of four, same-suit building, and only Kings in empty columns. Try FreeCell to feel the difference.
Where to go after Eight Off?
For a longer open puzzle, try FreeCell Two Decks. For a similar same-suit challenge, try Baker's Solitaire. Or browse the games page.