SolitaireWhich Solitaire Games Can You Actually Win? Odds for 10 Variants
Losing a solitaire game does not always mean you played badly — sometimes the deal was impossible before you touched it. Knowing which games hand you unwinnable hands, and how often, changes how you should feel about a losing streak.
Solvable is not the same as won
Two very different numbers get quoted in discussions of solitaire odds, and mixing them up is why you see wildly contradictory claims.
- Solvable means a winning line exists if you could see every card, including the face-down ones, and played perfectly. This is the theoretical ceiling, usually established by computer search.
- Actual win rate is what happens when a human being who cannot see the hidden cards plays the deal once. It is always lower — often dramatically so.
In FreeCell the two figures nearly coincide, because nothing is hidden. In Klondike they diverge enormously.
The games, ranked by how winnable they are
| Game | Roughly how winnable | What decides it |
|---|---|---|
| FreeCell | Very high — nearly all deals solvable | Your planning, essentially nothing else |
| Spider (1 suit) | High | Tidiness before each deal |
| Golf | Moderate | Luck of the sequence, with real choices |
| Klondike (Draw 1) | Moderate | Digging order and stock management |
| TriPeaks | Moderate | Which peak you open first |
| Yukon | Moderate | Group moves and empty columns |
| Klondike (Draw 3) | Lower | Stock cycle timing |
| Spider (2 suits) | Lower | Avoiding mixed-suit knots |
| Canfield | Low — it was a casino game by design | The reserve, mostly |
| Russian Solitaire | Low | Same-suit building is punishing |
| Spider (4 suits) | Low | Everything at once |
| Forty Thieves | Low | Single-card moves, no redeal |
| Pyramid | Very low | Pairing locks, largely outside your control |
Canfield deserves a special mention: it was originally run as a casino game where you bought a deck and were paid per card sent to the foundations. The house did very well out of it. If it feels rigged against you, that is because it was designed to be.
Why Klondike is so streaky
Klondike hides twenty-one of its twenty-eight tableau cards, and the failure mode is circular: the card you need is buried under the card that needs it. No amount of skill unpicks that knot, because the required move does not exist.
This is why Klondike feels streaky in a way FreeCell never does. Two players of very different ability will both hit unwinnable deals at a similar rate; the better player simply extracts wins from more of the deals that were winnable.
If you lose three Klondike deals in a row, that is completely normal and says nothing about your play. If you lose three FreeCell deals in a row, it is worth reviewing what happened — those were probably all winnable.
A word about the numbers
Treat every solitaire win-rate figure you read — here or anywhere else — with some caution. Published percentages vary widely because they depend on details that often go unstated:
- Which rule variant. Unlimited redeals versus three passes changes Klondike’s odds substantially.
- Perfect play or human play. The gap between them is the largest single factor.
- Whether undo was allowed. Unlimited undo turns a single attempt into an exhaustive search, which changes everything.
- Sample size and source. Some widely repeated numbers trace back to small or undocumented samples.
That is why the table above gives ranges and relative rankings rather than decimal places. The ordering is well established and useful; the exact percentages are far shakier than they usually look.
Frequently asked questions
What percentage of Klondike games are winnable?
Estimates from computer search suggest roughly 80–90% of Klondike deals are theoretically solvable if you could see every face-down card. Real players see far less and win considerably less often — particularly in Draw 3, where much of the stock is inaccessible on any given pass.
Which solitaire game has the best odds?
FreeCell, by a wide margin. Every card is visible from the start and the overwhelming majority of deals are solvable, so your win rate is limited mainly by your own planning.
Which solitaire game is hardest to win?
Among common variants, Pyramid and four-suit Spider are the toughest. Pyramid in particular locks cards behind pairing requirements that often cannot be satisfied at all.
Does using undo count as winning?
That is between you and your conscience. Most players treat a no-undo win as the real measure and use undo to explore or learn.