Advanced solitaire tips: fewer moves and harder deals

Once you win most deals, the next challenges are winning with fewer moves, playing Klondike Turn 3, and taming Spider with 2 or 4 suits. This page is for players who know the rules and want to get better. If you are new, start with tips for beginners.

Win in fewer moves

Each game keeps your Best: the fewest moves you needed for a win. The Daily deal keeps your best for today. Here is how moves are counted, so you know where to save them:

So, to save moves:

• Use Finish. In Klondike and FreeCell, as soon as Finish appears, it sends every remaining card up for just one move. Don't move the last cards up one by one.
• Move runs, not single cards. In FreeCell, one long run move counts as one move, however many cards it carries.
• Fewer trips through the draw pile. Each tap on the draw pile is a move. In Klondike, play every turned card you can before you tap again.
• Replay the deal. Restart this deal gives you the same cards. The Daily deal is the same all day, so you can play it again and use what you learned.

Klondike Turn 3

In Turn 3, each tap turns three cards and only the top one can be played. That changes which cards you can reach.

• Count the trips. If you play a card from the turned cards, the order of the next trip changes. Sometimes playing one card on purpose lets a hidden card come to the top next time round.
• Don't waste the draw pile. Go through it once just to look, then plan which cards you want.
• Take a card back down. A card on a top pile can come back onto the table. A red 5 brought back down can be a home for a black 4 you need to move.
• Use Hint when a plan feels stuck. The Hint looks for a full winning plan, not just the next move, and that is a big help in Turn 3.

Spider with 2 and 4 suits

With more suits, runs get mixed, and only same-suit runs can move as one group.

• Same suit beats everything. When a card could go on two cards of the right number, pick the one of the same suit.
• Empty piles are tools. With one empty pile you can take a mixed run apart and build it again in one suit. Don't block an empty pile with a single card you don't need to move.
• Clean up before every deal. Make every same-suit move and turn every hidden card you can before you tap the draw pile. A deal puts a card on all ten piles.
• Expect hard deals. Spider deals are random. With 4 suits, some deals are very hard, and the Hint can lose its way too. Restart this deal and try another plan, or start a new deal.

Big FreeCell moves

The number of cards you can move at once is (empty free spots + 1), doubled for each empty pile.

• Count before you park. Each card in a free spot makes your next run move smaller.
• An empty pile is worth more than spots. With 4 empty free spots you can move 5 cards; with 3 spots and 1 empty pile you can move 8.
• Moving into an empty pile is smaller. The empty pile you move into does not count, so a run that fits onto a card may be too long for an empty pile.
• Send cards up early, but not too early. In FreeCell a low card on a top pile can still come back down if you need it as a home.

The full table is on the FreeCell page.

Pyramid: plan the draw pile

• Remember what is coming. The draw pile goes round again as often as you like, in the same order. After one trip you know which cards wait in it.
• Save partners. If the pyramid has a stuck 9, keep that in mind; a 4 from the draw pile can free it later.
• Free the kings early. A king holds down the two cards just above it until it leaves.

Make it harder

• Turn Show where a card can go and One tap moves a card off in Settings, so you find every move yourself.
• Turn Only deals you can win off. Some random deals can't be won, just like with real cards.
• Try to win the Daily deal without tapping Hint at all.

See also

• Daily deal and Goals: the best place to chase low move counts.
• Hints, Undo and other helpers: how the Hint finds its plan.
• Glossary: every card word in this guide.
• Play Solitaire.

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