FreeCell Solitaire Rules

FreeCell is the one major solitaire game where the entire deck is visible from the very first moment — there's no hidden stock pile to draw from later, which means every FreeCell deal is, in principle, a fully solvable logic puzzle rather than a game with any luck left in it once the cards are dealt.

The deal

A standard 52-card deck is dealt out entirely, face-up, into eight tableau columns (four columns get seven cards each, and four get six), with every single card visible from the start. There's no stock pile and no hidden information anywhere in the game.

The four free cells

Above the tableau sit four empty "free cells," each able to hold exactly one card temporarily. Any card — from the top of a tableau column or from a free cell — can be moved into an empty free cell at any time, giving a player a small, flexible holding area to temporarily park cards that are blocking a move they want to make elsewhere.

Building in the tableau

Within the tableau columns, cards build downward in rank while alternating color — a red 8 can receive a black 7, for instance, but not a red 6. A move can involve a single card or, if enough free cells and empty columns are available to support it, a full pre-built sequence of cards moved together as a unit (the maximum number of cards a single move can shift depends on how many free cells and empty tableau columns are currently open).

The foundations

Four foundation piles, one per suit, build upward starting from the ace through the king. Any card that's currently on top of a tableau column or sitting in a free cell can be sent to its matching foundation the moment it's the next needed rank for that suit.

Winning

The game is won the instant all 52 cards have been moved onto the four foundation piles in complete ace-to-king order for every suit. Because the entire deck is visible from the start, there's no point at which new hidden information appears — every FreeCell deal is a pure logic puzzle from the very first move.

Why almost every deal is winnable

Because nothing is hidden, FreeCell deals are famously solvable at an extremely high rate with correct play — of the original 32,000 numbered deals distributed with early Microsoft Windows versions of the game, all but one (deal number 11982) were eventually proven solvable, and that single unsolvable deal became well known enough among players that it's sometimes deliberately sought out as a curiosity. This near-universal solvability is a direct consequence of the fully-visible deal: unlike Klondike, where cards hidden in the tableau or stock can genuinely lock a game, FreeCell's information is complete from move one, so a loss almost always reflects a suboptimal sequence of moves rather than bad luck in the deal itself.

Strategy: clearing a column before chasing the foundations

Because empty tableau columns (not just empty free cells) dramatically increase how many cards can be moved together at once, experienced players often prioritize fully emptying a single tableau column early, even at the cost of temporarily parking several cards in free cells to do it, rather than rushing individual cards to the foundations as soon as they're available. Sending a card to the foundation too early can sometimes strand a card beneath it that's still needed to unblock a later, more valuable move — a common beginner mistake is treating "send it to the foundation the moment you can" as always correct, when holding a low card back in the tableau briefly is sometimes the better play.

Origins: a computer-native solitaire game

Unlike most classic solitaire games, which trace back to physical card play well before computers existed, FreeCell's specific rules were formalized directly for computer play — credited to Paul Alfille, who built an early digital version in 1978, with the game reaching enormous popularity after Microsoft bundled it into Windows starting in the mid-1990s. That bundled version is also what fixed the tradition of numbered, reproducible deals, a feature that made the deal-11982 "unsolvable" curiosity discoverable and documentable in the first place.

Questions that come up mid-game

Can an entire built sequence in the tableau be moved to another column at once, or only single cards? A full sequence can move together, but the number of cards it can contain in one move is limited by how many free cells and empty columns are currently available — the effective limit is generally calculated as one plus the number of open free cells, doubled for every completely empty tableau column beyond the destination.

Is there ever a hidden card in FreeCell, the way Klondike keeps some tableau cards face-down? No — every card is dealt face-up from the very first move; there is no face-down card anywhere in the standard game.