How to play FreeCell

What FreeCell is

FreeCell is a solitaire card game where luck plays almost no part. All 52 cards are dealt face up at the start, so you can see everything and plan ahead. Four free cells in the corner each hold one card while you dig for the cards you need. The goal is to build all four suits up from Ace to King on the foundations. It is a game of thinking a few moves ahead, and very satisfying when a tangled deal finally opens up.

Playing FreeCell on AllFun

AllFun FreeCell numbers its deals from 1 to 1,000,000 with its own generator. You can type any number to play that deal again or share it with a friend. Every deal you are given is one our solver has won, and it rates them, so you can choose Easy (relaxed), Medium (classic) or Hard (tricky). Win in few enough moves for three stars.

Tap a card and it goes to the best place for it, or drag it where you want it. Cards that can safely go home move there by themselves. Hint shows a move that still leads to a win, and Undo takes back as many moves as you like. The Daily deal is one winnable deal a day, the same for everyone; win it for a crown and keep your streak going.

The rules

The layout

The whole deck is dealt face up into eight columns: four columns of seven cards and four of six. Above them sit four free cells and four foundations.

Moving cards

• Only the bottom card of a column can move.
• On the columns, build down in alternating colours: a red 7 on a black 8.
• Any card can go into an empty free cell, one card per cell, and can come back out to a column or a foundation later.
• Any card can go into an empty column.
• Foundations build up by suit, from Ace to King.

Moving a run: the supermove

Strictly, cards move one at a time. But a run in order can move as one when there is room to shuffle it card by card through the free cells and empty columns. You can move up to free cells + 1 cards, doubled for each empty column. With two free cells empty and one empty column, that is (2 + 1) × 2 = 6 cards. Moving a run into an empty column allows half as many.

Winning

The deal is won when all 52 cards are on the foundations. You lose only if you run out of moves, and with Undo you can always step back.

Six tips for FreeCell

1. Look before the first move. Find the Aces and twos and note what is on top of them. That is your plan.
2. Keep free cells empty. Every card you park reduces how many cards you can move at once. Use cells as a short stop, not storage.
3. An empty column is worth two cells. It doubles the size of runs you can move. Emptying a short column early is often the best opening.
4. Free the low cards. A buried Ace or two blocks a whole suit. Dig them out first.
5. Do not fill an empty column with a single card unless it starts a long run there.
6. Count before a big move. Check that you have room for the whole run before you start taking a column apart.

A short history

FreeCell grew from older patience games such as Baker's Game, which built down by suit instead of by colour. Its modern form was first written as a computer game in the late 1970s and then spread widely when it came with personal computers in the 1990s. Players who studied huge numbers of deals found that only a tiny handful of them cannot be won.

FreeCell FAQ