How to Play Klondike Patience

By Jaques of London · Est. 1795 · Updated 2026-08-17

Klondike Patience is a single-player card game played with a standard 52-card deck. Seven tableau columns, four foundation piles, a stock, and a waste pile form the layout. The player works to move all 52 cards onto the foundations in suit sequence from Ace to King. Most deals are winnable with careful play, though some are not, which keeps every game honest.

It is the world's most widely played patience game, familiar to generations of players at kitchen tables and on long journeys. Its appeal is the combination of simple rules and genuine decision-making: luck deals the cards, but skill decides whether you get out. A game fits comfortably into ten to thirty minutes, making it an ideal pastime whenever you have a deck to hand and a flat surface in front of you.

A little history

The name Klondike is widely documented in card-game literature from the late nineteenth century, and its origins are unclear beyond that. Some reference books associate the name with the Klondike Gold Rush of 1896-99, suggesting prospectors played it to pass time, but no firm contemporary evidence ties the game's invention to that event. The patience family as a whole spread across Europe during the nineteenth century, and Klondike appears in English-language card-game compendia from at least the 1890s. It is traditionally considered the default form of patience in the English-speaking world.

Setting up

1. Shuffle the deck thoroughly.
2. Deal 28 cards face-down into seven tableau columns: column 1 gets 1 card, column 2 gets 2, column 3 gets 3, and so on up to column 7 with 7 cards.
3. Turn the top card of each column face up.
4. Place the remaining 24 cards face-down in a single pile to form the stock, positioned above the tableau to the left.
5. Leave space beside the stock for a waste pile, and above the tableau for four foundation piles, one for each suit.

How to play

1. The turn begins by examining all legal moves in the tableau and foundations before drawing from the stock.
2. Move any exposed Ace immediately to an empty foundation pile to start that suit's sequence.
3. Build foundations upward in suit: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, Jack, Queen, King on each Ace, all of the same suit.
4. Build tableau columns downward in alternating colour: a red 7 may be placed on a black 8, a black Queen on a red King, and so on.
5. Only a face-up card, or a correctly ordered and alternating-colour sequence of face-up cards, may be moved as a unit between tableau columns.
6. When a face-down card is exposed by moving all face-up cards off its column, turn it face up immediately.
7. An empty column (all cards removed) may only be filled with a King or a sequence headed by a King.
8. When no tableau move is available or desired, turn cards from the stock. In the standard game, turn one card at a time onto the waste pile. Only the top card of the waste pile is available for play.
9. A card taken from the waste pile into the tableau or onto a foundation exposes the card beneath it, which is then available.
10. When the stock is exhausted, pick up the waste pile without shuffling, turn it over, and it becomes the new stock. In the standard game there is no limit to the number of times you may do this.
11. Continue alternating between tableau moves and drawing from the stock until either all 52 cards are on the foundations (win) or no further progress is possible (blocked).

Winning and scoring

You win by moving all 52 cards onto the four foundation piles, each built from Ace up to King in its own suit. When all four foundations show a King at the top, the game is complete. There is no points system in the standard rules. If the game becomes blocked before all cards are placed, the hand is lost and the deck is shuffled for a fresh deal.

The fine points

The most common dispute concerns redeals. The standard English rule allows unlimited passes through the stock, but many players prefer to limit redeals to two or three to make the game harder. Agree on this before play begins. A second common question is whether you must play a card to the foundation the moment it becomes available. Traditionally there is no such obligation: you may keep a card in the tableau if it is useful there, though playing it to the foundation when possible is rarely wrong. The exception is Aces, which almost always should go up immediately.

Moving sequences of cards between columns is permitted provided the entire sequence is already in valid alternating-colour descending order. You may not rearrange cards within a sequence to create a new one. If a face-down card is accidentally seen during play it must be turned face-down again and treated as unplayed; only cards legitimately exposed by the movement of tableau cards may be turned face up.

How to win more often

• Prioritise uncovering face-down cards over making tidy tableau sequences: every face-down card is information and a potential resource.
• Create empty columns with care. An empty column is most valuable as a temporary holding space for a King-led sequence that will free buried cards elsewhere.
• Do not rush cards to the foundations. A low card left in the tableau can bridge a sequence and allow a longer move; premature foundation play can block the tableau.
• When you have a choice of which column to uncover, favour the column with the most face-down cards beneath it, as it offers the greatest potential gain.
• Before drawing from the stock, take a moment to check every tableau move available. Drawing when a free move exists wastes the stock and reduces your options.

Variations

Turn Three

Instead of turning one card at a time from the stock, the player turns three cards at a time, fanning them onto the waste pile. Only the top card of the three is available for play. When the stock runs out, the waste pile is turned over and play continues. This version is considerably harder than turn-one and is traditionally limited to a fixed number of passes through the stock, commonly three, to prevent the game becoming a prolonged exercise in cycling.

Vegas Patience

In this scoring variant the player pays a notional stake of 52 units at the start and wins back 5 units for every card successfully moved to the foundations. The stock is turned one card at a time and may only be cycled once with no redeal allowed. The tight restriction on stock use makes each draw significant and raises the stakes considerably. The game is won outright if all 52 cards reach the foundations.

Double Klondike

Two standard 52-card decks are shuffled together to form a 104-card pack. The tableau is extended to nine columns with nine face-down cards beneath each top face-up card, and eight foundation piles are needed, two per suit, each running from Ace to King. The extra cards create a much larger and more complex layout, and the game is correspondingly harder to complete, but it suits players who find the standard game too brief.

Thoughtful Klondike

All cards are dealt face up from the start: face-down tableau cards are simply turned over immediately during setup rather than when uncovered by play. The player therefore has complete information throughout the game. This variant removes the element of surprise entirely and reveals how much of any given hand is winnable with perfect play, making it a useful tool for understanding the underlying structure of the game.

Klondike Patience: frequently asked questions