Solitaire is an umbrella term for popular single-player card games rather than a singular title. These card games are patience games with common characteristics, such as starting with parts of a set of cards arranged on the table and aiming to sort all cards into piles while following a specific ruleset.
Thanks to free digital games included in Microsoft’s Windows OS from the 1990s, most people associate Klondike and Spider when they hear Solitaire. You can play both popular variants at the Palace of Cards, by the way: Visit the Solitaire Palace to play Klondike Solitaire and the Spider Palace to play Spider Solitaire online!
Other well-known Solitaire variants include FreeCell, Scorpion, Easthaven, and Yukon. We offer Scorpion and Easthaven as custom rules in our games.
Solitaire games can vary greatly in terms of their rules and objectives, resulting in challenging games of strategy and more relaxed and easy-going variants. There is likely a solitaire card game for every type of player. That is why solitaire card games are enjoyed all over the world.
To play any solitaire game, you first shuffle the deck. Depending on the game, that can include 52 or 104 cards. The 13 ranks (from Ace, Two, Three, etc., to King) can appear multiple times in the same one or two suits, or they can appear once in each suit, like in four-suit spider solitaire, for example.
Then, you fill the tableau, which is the area where you can move open cards around in, aiming to sort them and reveal face-down cards bit by bit.
Above the tableau, you also have the foundation, where the sorted piles end up. In some solitaire games, you fill these piles card by card throughout the game. In others, you fill these areas with an entire pile once a fitting row of cards is completed in the tableau.
In most solitaire games, a draw pile, or stock, remains. You can use it to add cards to your tableau. The mechanics of this pile depend on the solitaire variant you are facing.
For example, in Klondike, you can reveal the stock card by card and decide whether to use the revealed card in the tableau or leave it in the waste for now. In Spider Solitaire, on the other hand, you automatically attach one card to each of the card rows in the tableau when you choose to use the stock.
You solve and win a Solitaire card game by sorting the entirety of the used card decks into separate piles that each include only one suit and all ranks. That means, by the end o the game, there can neither be cards in the face-down pile nor in the tableau playing area.
Our Solitaire games at the Palace of Cards enable you to compete live with other players that face the same challenge as you – solitaire multiplayer fun! That way, the quickest and most efficient player wins! Visit the Solitaire Palace to play Klondike Solitaire and Easthaven or the Spider Palace to play Spider Solitaire and Scorpion online!