Are All Solitaire Games Winnable? What the Research Says

No, not all solitaire games are winnable. In classic Klondike solitaire, some deals are lost from the moment they are dealt, however well you play. A large computer study found that even a player who knows where every card is can win only about 90.5% of Draw 1 deals and about 82% of Draw 3 deals. Real players can't see the face-down cards, so they win fewer than that.

Other solitaire games are very different. In FreeCell, where every card is dealt face up, almost every deal can be won. Here is what the numbers say, what "winnable" really means, and what it tells you about your own games.

What "winnable" means

A deal is winnable if there is at least one sequence of legal moves that gets all 52 cards onto the foundations. Whether you find that sequence is a separate question.

In Klondike the problem is hidden information. Twenty-one cards start face down in the tableau and the stock is face down too, so some of your decisions are educated guesses. A deal can be winnable and still get away from you because a guess went the wrong way.

That's why researchers study a version called "thoughtful" solitaire, where the player knows the position of every card from the start. It removes the guessing and asks a cleaner question: could this deal be won at all?

The numbers for Klondike

In a study published in the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research, Charlie Blake and Ian Gent used a solver to play enormous numbers of deals and estimate the share that can be won under standard rules (unlimited passes through the stock, and cards may come back down from the foundations). Their figures for thoughtful Klondike:

Source: Blake & Gent, "The Winnability of Klondike Solitaire and Many Other Patience Games".

Two things stand out:

• Even perfect play loses sometimes. Roughly one Draw 1 deal in ten, and nearly one Draw 3 deal in five, simply has no solution.
• Draw 3 loses about twice as many deals. In Draw 3 only every third stock card is reachable on a pass, which leaves many deals with no way through. Our guide to Draw 1 vs Draw 3 shows exactly how that works, card by card.

Some deals are dead from the first move

A small number of deals give you nothing to do at all: no tableau moves and no playable card anywhere in the stock. We counted how often that happens by dealing a million random games in each mode with Poozee's own solitaire engine:

So if you play Draw 3 regularly, you will occasionally meet a deal that is over before it starts. It's not you. There was nothing to find.

Why your own win rate is lower

The figures above are the ceiling. Your real results will be lower, for reasons that have nothing to do with skill:

• You can't see face-down cards. When two moves look equally good, the hidden cards decide which one was right, and you only find out later.
• Early choices lock in. Which of two black 8s you move onto a red 9, or which King fills an empty column, can decide a game many moves later.
• Draw 3 punishes skipped waste plays. Every card you play from the waste changes which cards you can reach on the next pass.

Undo helps you learn from those moments. Treat it as a way to look ahead: try a move, see which card turns up, and back out if it leads nowhere.

How FreeCell compares

FreeCell removes the hidden information entirely: all 52 cards are dealt face up, and four free cells give you room to maneuver. That changes the odds dramatically.

• The original Microsoft FreeCell came with 32,000 numbered deals. Volunteers in the Internet FreeCell Project set out to solve all of them in 1994 and 1995 and succeeded with every one except deal #11982, which has since resisted every human and computer attempt and is considered impossible.
• In one of the first large computer studies, in the mid-1990s, Don Woods ran a million random FreeCell deals through his solver program, and it solved all but 14 of them.

So while about one Klondike deal in ten can't be won even in Draw 1 with every card known, an unwinnable FreeCell deal is a genuine rarity. If you like solitaire but hate losing to the luck of the deal, FreeCell is the game for you. Start with how to play FreeCell.

Pro tip: On Poozee, new FreeCell games are picked from those 32,000 classic deals, skipping #11982, so every game you are dealt can be won. If you want to try the impossible one anyway, click Game # and enter 11982.

How to win more of the winnable ones

You can't change the deal, but you can stop throwing away winnable games. The biggest gains come from a few habits:

1. Turn over face-down cards first. Hidden cards are the whole difficulty of Klondike. Every one you reveal replaces a guess with information.
2. Make tableau moves before drawing. The stock isn't going anywhere.
3. Don't empty a column without a King to put there.
4. Don't rush cards to the foundations. A card sent home can't be a landing spot anymore.

Our full guide on how to win solitaire explains each habit, with examples.

Keep playing

Deal a game of Solitaire in Draw 1 or Draw 3 and see how close you can get to those numbers, or switch to FreeCell for a game where almost every deal can be solved. New to Klondike? Start with how to play solitaire.