Patience Cards
Card games for one player are called Patience in Britain and Solitaire in America. The web site pagat.com is devoted mostly to games for more than one player, but on this page I have provided some links to sites which specialise in one-player games. Some of these sites contain rules or analysis, and many of them provide software, since these solitary games are particularly suitable for play against a computer. If you have further links or information that should be included on this page, please let me know.
Play the most popular solitaire card game for FREE! Solitaire (also known as Klondike or Patience) requires thinking and good memory, also a little bit of luck to win. Download our Solitaire game.
This page deals with solitaire (patience) games played with playing-cards. There are separate pages for:
'Patience' is only one of several words used to denote one-player card games: it is the earliest recorded of them, is evidently French, and also denotes one-player games in general (Note 3). Patience cards from India are smaller, they are around 5.4×5.4 centimeters, Gothic patience cards are even smaller than that, they are 4.8×4.8 centimeters. I am going to write an entry about Gothic patience cards as well. As for fortune-telling on January 18th (the eve of Christ’s christening day), it’s absolutely right. Drag cards to move them between the waste pile, the seven tableau columns (at the bottom), and the four foundations. You can also double-click cards instead of dragging them to a foundation. You may move single cards or piles of cards within the tableau. You may only move cards off the waste pile, but you may onto and off the foundations.
- Video poker (usually played against a gaming machine which displays cards on a screen)
- Competitive Patience games: solitaire-like games for more than one player.
Here is a link to an article by David Parlett on the Origins and History of Patience / Solitaire.
Randy Rasa's Solitaire Central site contains a wide range of information, including a searchable Solitaire Rulebook with descriptions of numerous games, a searchable collection of reviews of computer solitaire games for download, plus reviews of online solitaire games.
Here is an archive copy of Gordon Bower's Solitaire pages, which have rules of several solitaires, old and new, and investigations of the probability of winning.
For information about Freecell, see Michael Keller's Freecell site, including a tutorial, a catalog of solutions and free computer program Freecell Pro. A further collection of Freecell links can be found at Freecell.org.
Michael Keller also runs the Solitaire Laboratory, which includes a section on Giza.
The rules section of the BVS Solitaire site has rules for hundreds of solitaire games.
Boris Sandberg's BVS Solitaire is a collection of 487 different solitaire games for Windows. He has also published BVS Solitaire for Mac OS X.The software allows the user to create new games by modifying the rules of the included games. The author writes: 'You'll be able to learn solitaires not found elsewhere. BVS Solitaire Collection gives you a plethora of statistical and scoring screens. You can track your performance and progress in playing solitaire about as completely as many people use a computer to track their finances. And you can publish your personal statistics on the BVS Solitaire Collection web site to appear in the top scores list.'
BVS also runs sites giving rules and strategy tips for Freecell and Spider, with free trial downloads of these games.
EndersGame's What You Should Know About Solitaire Card Games is the first of a series of articles tracing the history and terminology of Solitaire/Patience games and their recent success as popular computer games.
1st Free Solitaire for Windows 95/98/Me/2000/XP/2003 is a free 'lite' version of Boris Sandberg's BVS Solitaire, consisting of 7 popular solitaire card games: Yukon, FreeCell, Klondike, Flower Garden, Nestor, Bisley, Carpet.
The Single Player Card Games page of the Card Game Heaven site has rules of several Solitaire games.
Thomas Warfield's Pretty Good Solitaire is a collection of 770 solitaire games for Windows. Users can have their win/loss statistics posted on the web site. The site also contains the rules for all these games. From the same site you can also obtain Action Solitaire, in which you play for points against the clock in timed rounds, and Pretty Good Mahjongg, a collection of solitaire games using Mah Jong and other tile sets, including the well-known tile matching game, and also Mah Jong tile solitaires based on Freecell, Spider and Klondike.
SolSuite by TreeCardGames Inc. is a high quality Windows shareware collection more than 630 different Solitaire games including Klondike, FreeCell, Spider, Pyramid, Golf, Busy Aces, Canfield, Forty Thieves, Diplomat, Four Seasons, Poker Solitaire, Flower Garden, Rouge et Noir, Scorpion, Monte Carlo, Sultan, La Belle Lucie, Gaps and several original games. Features include unlimited undo and redo, Snapshot position and Undo to snapshot, comprehensive statistics, customisable playing-cards and backgrounds, and an editor that lets you change the rules of any game.
HOYLE Card Games for Windows or Mac OS X includes a collection of solitaire games, which are also available as a separate package.
Microsoft's Solitaire, a computer version of Klondike Solitaire created by Wes Cherry, was included with every version of Windows from 3.0 to 7. For later versions of Windows the Microsoft Solitaire Collection is available as a free download.
Aisleriot Solitaire is a free collection of over 80 solitaire games programmed in the GNOME scripting language and available for Linux, Windows and Hildon platforms. A manual is available that lists and describes the games.
Amy Bassett's Spider Solitaire site provides several free HTML5 versions of Spider Solitaire that can be played online in a web browser.
Laura Ockel's Tesseract Mobile publishes Android apps using a dynamic card design with different styles for exposed and partly concealed cards to improve readability. There is a Solitaire Free Pack with over 100 games and a Solitaire Mega Pack with over 250 games.
Zonora Technologies offers several shareware collections of solitaire games with comprehensive statistics and save, undo and replay facilities.
Solitaire.com is an English language edition of the Dutch site PatienceSpelen.nl with around 40 free games that can be played online in your browser; a German edition is also available at KartenSpielen.de. The Freecell game on these sites has a mechanism and game numbers consistent with the Microsoft Windows version.
Emily Krieger's Solitaire Cardgames site offers a selection of free online games along with sections of the history and startegy of solitaire.
James Yates has written pages on Solitaire Strategy and Vegas-style Scoring, which discuss the strategy of Klondike Solitaire.
From Andreas Sauer's site you can download the AS-Solitaire package for Windows which offers 120 games and a huge range of card designs.
WebTV users: the following sites provide Solitaire games that can be played on-line - no downloads and no Java required!
- Solitaire at Bill's Games
- Marc Brocoum's Ace Games server with Solitaire (Klondike) and some other games.
Here are the rules for Cribbage Solitaire, in which you play Cribbage against the deck.
You can play Solitaire at GameDuell. - they offer a range of Solitaire games that can be played for fun or for money.
Rick Holzgrafe's Semicolon Software publishes Solitaire Till Dawn, a collection of around 100 solitaire computer programs for the Macintosh, with rules and strategy tips.
Patient Cards For Triage
Scott McNab's Card Games 4 Free site reviews a range of free Solitaire games.
You can download Miha's Windows shareware collection 18 card games for 1 player which includes Freecell, Four Seasons, Golf, Alternate, Canfield, Auld Lang Syne, Castles in Spain, Klondike, Ship shape and Bristol fashion, The Battle of Ladies, Son of fortune, The Beleaguered Castle, Bisley, Fortress, Grandpa's clock, Princ Albert, Quadrille and Raglan. The free version gives access to a limited selection of these - to play all 18 you need to register the package, which includes a facility for the user to add further games by specifying their rules in a text file.
Solitaired.com offers a large collection of free solitaire games that can be played online in a web browser.
Patient Cards
John Punzak's EverydayGames.net has a collection of Java solitaire games which can be played in a web browser. They include Klondike, Spider, Scorpion, Pyramid, Canfield, Freecell and others.
TrapApps offers a wide range of free solitaire games to play online in a web browser.
Albert Henderson's Solitaire with Cards is a collection of free solitaires written in Javascript which can be played online in a web browser.
Here is an ad-free version of Holger Sindbaek's Solitaire Online where you can play Klondike, Spider and Freecell online in a web browser.
At the Solitaire Bliss site you can play Klondike, Spider, Freecell and Pyramid free online.
123 Free Solitaire is a freeware collection of solitaire games by TreeCardGames Inc. The same organisation also publishes several more free collections such as NetSolitaire and Spider Solitaire.
Dig Solitaire has a range of free online solitaire games.
At CardzMania.com you can play several solitaire games online: FreeCell, Klondike, Seahaven Towers, Spider and Yukon.
From Funkitron you can buy a Solitaire Kingdom Supreme - a variation of Klondike Solitaire for Windows or Mac in which the pack contains various bonus cards and key cards which confer special powers when discovered.
Solitr is a free open-source JavaScript-based Klondike game by Jo Liss.
DKM software offers an range of free online Solitaire games.
Game Colony offers Freecell, Solitaire and Rush-21 head to head games and multi-player tournaments, which can be played free or for cash prizes.
Here is a link to David Bernazzani's free Solitude for Windows software.
The shareware Absolutist Solitaire Studio has a range of solitaire games and a Solitaire Script language which allows you to design your own games and add them to the program.
PySol is a free open source collection of solitaire games which can run on Unix, Windows and Macintosh computers.. The original project by Markus Oberhumer officially ended in 2004, but was continued and extended by the PySol Fan Club. The collection now includes more than 1000 solitaire games.
At Solitaire Paradise, you can play verious solitaire games including Tri-Peaks Classic, a more skilful variation of the popular Tri-Towers solitaire game, the similar Golf Solitaire and also Tower Solitaire, a variation of Pyramid Solitaire in which one card can be placed in a temporary store, Forty Thieves and Thieves of Egypt.
Free Patience Card Game Download
At the free Solitaire100 site you can play Klondike, Spider, Pyramid and Freecell online your web browser - no download is required.
At Solitaire Mania you can play a number of free solitaire games online in your browser.
Laura Jensen has written a free Spider Solitaire game which can be played in a web browser with 1, 2 or 4 suits.
Code This Lab's HTML5 Spider, Freecell, Klondike and Pyramid solitaire games, which can be played in a browser, are available from Envato Market where you can play online or buy the code.
Amber Mango, a UK company based in York, offers Freecell3D, a 3D rendered version of Freecell with the emphasis on looks and features. The game features an animated solver and a the split-screen Race Mode where you compete against the computer to finish the same deal first.
Solitär Spielen has a selection of free online Solitaire games. Although the pages are in German, the game interfaces are in English.
Harpan.se is a Swedish site providing a range of Solitaire games that can be played online in a browser. 'Harpan' is the Swedish word for Patience or Solitaire.
North Star Solutions' Poker Challenge is a computer solitaire game for Windows in which the objective is to identify and remove high scoring poker hands from a playing-card layout.
Maurits van der Schee's AceCardGames site has twelve Flash solitaire games that can be played on line. (You will need to download the free Flash 7 player if you don't already have it).
DogMelon offers solitaire games for PC, Palm and eBookman.
Here are Rudy Muller's rules for Rangoon (also known as Station, Blue-Moon, Gaps, Montana Aces). The page also has details of his computer program for playing it.
The Italian site Solitari con le carte has rules and software for several games.
Here is John Kanold's SolKan32 for Windows,which plays about 200 different Solitaire games including several not found in other packages.
The Softgame Company's Funsol Solitaire plays hundreds of solitaire games.
The Solitaire Network has a collection of 30 Java Soliatire games that are free to play on line without registration.
Mike's Cards is a shareware collection of solitaire games for Macintosh and Windows computers. A freeware version Mike's Cards Lite is also available from the same site.
Solitaire Forever offers a collection of over 100 solitaire games with 3D graphics for Macs running OS X 10.2 or higher; they will run on PowerPC or Intel Macs but no longer work with OS 9.
Spielhalle24.net has several free Solitaire games that can be played online in a browser.
Solitaire King has several free solitaire games that can be played online in a browser.
Poki has a small selection of solitaire games that can be played online in a browser.
Pete Wiseman's Solitaire City offers ten Solitaire games for Windows, iOS and mobile devices (45 if variations are counted). These are timed games against the clock - the faster you play, the higher you score.
Mike Perry's Allgood Solitaire (formerly Poor man's Solitaire) for the Macintosh includes a range of games.
At playsolitaire-online.com you can play Klondike and 30 other solitaire games online in a browser.
Neon Games has some solitaire games that can be played online.
Klondike Solitaire can be played online at playsolitaire.io.
The Solitaire Bodies page has Klondike Solitaire games with pinup cards that can be played on line or downloaded.
Here is Brian Bain's Windows Solitaire program. Standard Solitaire but with a variety of card deck options and the possibility to design your own deck.
Rules (in French) for La loi Salique and Pyramide are available from Jean-François Bustarret's site.
Tim Winter's Game Suite a collection of nine solitaire card games - not traditional solitaire games but games in which you race against a clock.
Here are Mike Lalena's Java Games: Eleven Out, Fun21, Poker Flash, Quick21 and others. Again, these are games played against the clock. Most of them were originally developed for the coin operated touch screen game systems usually found at bars.
Note - links to Video Poker games have been moved from here to the Video Poker page. Links to Tile Matching games are now on the Tile Matching page.
Playing cards have been a part of history as far back at 10th century China, and in the 1800’s they became a favorite pastime. With a standard 52-card deck you can play hundreds of different games, some that only require one player. The Patience Card Game is one of those games.
Called “Solitaire” in the US, Patience a card game that combines skill and creativity with its namesake, making it an intriguing option. Some historians believe that notable figures like Napoleon played the game, and today there are over 250 different known variations.
Here we’ll give you a rundown on how to play the card game Patience. This how-to guide features information on the traditional method, as well and two other options based on the card game patience. How to play, the rules and a few tips and tricks are covered, giving you everything you need to get started, other than a deck of cards.
Card Games: Patience – How to Play
In order to play, you’re going to first need to understand the basics.
Patience Cards Free
Getting Started
To play the traditional version of Patience, you’ll need a standard deck of 52 playing cards and a flat surface. You’ll use all the cards, but not the Jokers in the game.
The objective is to position your cards in your foundations by sequence, in suit from low to high, or Ace to the king. To win the game, you’ll need to use every card in the deck and arrange them in this order.
Here’s how to do it.
Terms and Dealing Your Deck
Patience has a few terms that you won’t find in other card games. Here we’ll give you the definitions and instructions on how to set up the game.
1. The Tableau
One of seven piles that make up the main table, the Tableau is your main playing field in Patience. To deal your Tableau, begin from left to right and deal one card face up and then six cards face down in a horizontal line.
Then, go back to the left and deal one card face up on the second pile, followed by one card face down on each of the remaining piles. Next, return to the left and on the third pile deal one card face up, and then cards face down on the rest of the piles. Continue this process until your last pile has a face-up card with six face-down cards beneath it.
2. The Foundations
There are four foundation piles where you can build your suit sequence. In traditional Patience, the four aces are the foundation base, and the piles are created by suit and broken up into hearts, diamonds, spades, and clubs.
3. The Stock Pile
Sometimes called the hand pile, this is where your remaining cards stay after you’ve dealt your Tableau. You’ll use these as you go when needed, so place them in a pile above your Tableau.
4. The Talon
Commonly referred to as the waste pile, the Talon is where you put cards that you have no place for on the foundation piles or in the tableau.
How to Play
First, deal your tableau and then start by moving cards into sequential order piles to create new opportunities. If you relocate cards to another row, you can flip over one card from underneath to see if you can use it to build a pile or add to a sequence.
Keep an eye out for Aces in the deck and move them to the foundation piles when they’re uncovered. Use these foundation piles to place your cards by suit and sequence from Ace to King as you reveal them.
Once you’ve run out of opportunities in your tableau, you can draw from the stock pile. Flip over the card and place it appropriately in the tableau or foundations. If there is no place for this card, or another card during gameplay to go, put it in the waste pile.
If you free up a stack in your tableau, you can fill the space with a King. This strategic move could unblock a facedown card and help you to beat the game.
Continue playing until there are no possible moves left or until you build your cards into suited sequences in the foundation pile and win.
Card Game: Clock Patience – How to Play
The card game Clock Patience is a lot like the original, but with a few fun differences that make it more of a game of chance and less of a game of skill. Sometimes called Four of a Kind, Hidden Cards, Sundial, and Travelers, the deck is dealt in Clock Patience to resemble a clock face and uses 13 piles of four cards each.
The goal is to complete all of the four-of-a-kind sets before the last King is revealed.
Here’s how to play.
Dealing
Shuffle the deck and then deal the cards into 13 face-down piles of four cards each. Arrange the piles to mimic the numbers on a dial or clock, with 12 forming a circle and the final pile placed at the center.
Patience Cards
Rules
Patience Cards Free
Each pile on the dial corresponds to its respective number on the clock, and the pile in the middle is number 13. Begin by turning the top card in pile 13 face up, and place it under the stack that corresponds to that card number. For example, if you turn over a four of hearts, slide that card, face up, in the four spot under the four pile. Jacks go under the 11 pile, Queens under 12, and Kings under 13.
Once you’ve placed your card, face up, under the pile, then turn the card on top of that same pile face up and place it appropriately.
Continue this pattern until the game ends. You win if all 13 of the piles become face-up piles of four of a kind.
The one caveat is that the game is over if four Kings are face up before the entire dial is completed. Because of this rule, Clock Solitaire is almost impossible to beat, and you can expect to win only around one percent of the time.
Chinese Patience Card Game – How to Play
Another version, Chinese Patience, is like a cross between Klondike and Scorpion and brings the best of both varieties to the table. This option utilizes skill and critical thinking and is one that can be won.
Dealing
To set up this game, you’ll deal forty-nine cards to your tableau. Arranged as seven stacks of seven cards each, this is a different set up than traditional Patience. The stacks should be organized as follows:
- First three stacks each have seven cards all dealt face-up
- Fourth stack deal three cards face-down and four face-up
- Fifth stack deal four cards face down and three face-up
- Sixth stack deal five cards face-down and two face-up
- Seventh stack deal six cards face-down and one face-up
You should have three remaining cards to set aside in your stock pile.
From here, the game plays just like traditional Patience. To win, you need to arrange the cards in the four foundation suits from Ace to King. As with the original Patience rules, you can place cards in alternating colors and descending ranks either singly or in a stack. You can draw from the stock pile should you need to, and kings may be moved into empty spaces when available.
Patience Strategy Tips
While some versions of Patience rely on the luck of the draw, some require skill to have a chance to win. Here are a few tips to beat the game.
- Get face down cards turned over as quickly as possible. Given the choice between drawing from the stock or waste or uncovering an unknown card, it’s more beneficial to know what’s on the tableau.
- Wait to use your stock cards until there are no options remaining in your tableau. Bonus points if you have an open space and a strategy to place them where they do the least damage possible.
- Build your foundations in synch with another opposing suit. For example, if you build your stacks and foundations relatively evenly between diamonds and spades, it’s unlikely you’ll need a card that you can no longer access.
- Create space for your Kings as soon as possible. One key to beating the game is to have a place for your King to go when it’s uncovered. Focus on consolidating the cards in your tableau to give you room to work and maneuver when the time comes.
- Have patience. Like the namesake of the game, you’ll need to take your time and think through each strategy and move before you make it. Explore your options first to ensure you uncover as many cards as possible.
In addition to these three versions, there are hundreds of other styles of Patience you can try. To explore more, try downloading an app or checking online for rules to different ways to entertain yourself with nothing more than a deck of cards.