FreeCell is the thinking person's solitaire: every card starts face up, so almost every game can be won with careful play. The rules below are the standard ones, with the famous "how many cards may I move at once" rule explained in plain words, and the named variants labeled.
What the game is
FreeCell is a one-player card game. The whole deck is dealt face up into eight columns. Four single "free cells" give you parking spots for cards that are in the way. The goal is the usual solitaire goal: build all four suits up in order — Ace to King — on the foundation piles.
Players: 1. What you need: one standard 52-card deck.
Setting up
- Deal the deck face up into eight columns. The first four columns get 7 cards each and the last four get 6 cards each — that uses all 52.
- Mark out four free cells — in a physical game, just leave four card-sized spaces. Each free cell may hold exactly one card.
- Mark out four foundation piles, one per suit, all starting empty.
- There is no stock and nothing is hidden. Every card is in view from the first move.
How to play
- What you can pick up: only the bottom (last) card of each column is free to move, plus any card sitting in a free cell.
- Build the columns down in alternating colors — a black 7 on a red 8, a red Queen on a black King — the same way as Klondike.
- Build the foundations up by suit: each foundation starts with an Ace and climbs Ace, 2, 3 … to King, all one suit.
- Use the free cells as parking: any free card may be moved into an empty free cell, and played out of it again later exactly as if it were a column's bottom card.
- An empty column may be filled with any card — in FreeCell, unlike Klondike, you are not limited to Kings. (One related game, Seahaven Towers, keeps the King-only rule — see the variants.)
- Moving more than one card at a time — the "supermove" rule: cards in a column that already form a correct downhill alternating run may be lifted together, but only as far as your working space allows. The plain rule behind it: a run can be moved as a block only if you could have moved those cards one at a time, using the empty free cells and empty columns as temporary parking. So the longest run you can move is (1 + number of empty free cells) × 2 for each empty column — each empty column doubles it. With all four cells empty and no empty columns, that means 5 cards at once. One catch: if you are moving a run into an empty column, that column is the destination, not a parking spot, so it does not count toward the doubling.
- Winning and losing: you win when all 52 cards rest on the foundations. The game is lost when no legal move remains — which is rare, because nearly every FreeCell deal has a winning line.
Ways to play it differently
- Baker's Game (labeled variant — FreeCell's parent, described by Martin Gardner in 1968): the same layout and free cells, but the columns build down by suit instead of by alternating colors — a spade only on a spade. That one change makes it much harder.
- Double FreeCell (labeled variant): played with two decks — 104 cards — dealt into ten columns, with six free cells, and every foundation built up from Ace to King twice, once per deck. Same rules, bigger puzzle.
- Relaxed (casual) FreeCell (labeled computer variant): the one-at-a-time logic is dropped, and any correct run may be moved as a block no matter how few free cells or empty columns you have. Many phone and casual computer versions quietly play this way — friendlier for learning, but it is a relaxed setting, not the standard rule.
- Seahaven Towers (labeled relative, not a FreeCell setting): nearly the same layout, but with two of the free cells starting occupied by Kings — and an empty column may be refilled with a King only. That is where the King-only rule comes from in this family; standard FreeCell allows any card.
Official rule or house rule?
"I can move any run I like — the app lets me": That is relaxed FreeCell. Under the standard rules, a block move is legal only when the same cards could have been shifted one by one through the free cells and empty columns you have. The formula in rule 6 above is exactly that test, written as arithmetic.
Can a free cell hold a little stack to save space? No — one card per cell, by definition; that limit is what makes the game a puzzle instead of an open table.
Is every deal winnable? Almost — and the exception is famous. Of the classic million numbered deals in the original Microsoft game, exactly one — deal #11982 — is known to have no solution. Everything else can, in principle, be finished.
Must foundations be filled in order, suit by suit? Each suit climbs independently — but never out of order within its own pile. A 3 of hearts cannot go up before the 2 of hearts.
Common questions
Why does the run limit double for each empty column?
Because an empty column can hold a whole run while you shuffle the others past it — each empty column doubles the number of cards you could rearrange one at a time. The free cells add parking one card each; empty columns multiply it.
Can I move a card out of a foundation back into a column?
The standard rules do not forbid bringing the top card of a foundation back down, and it occasionally saves a game. Some computer versions lock foundation cards in place — that is a program setting, not a book rule.
What is the best first use of a free cell?
Free cells are precious: every filled cell shortens the runs you may move. Experienced players keep at least one or two empty as long as they can. (That is a playing tip, not a rule.)
Does the deal order matter with real cards?
Deal row by row or column by column — as long as the first four columns end with 7 and the rest with 6 and everything is face up, the layout is the same.
Sources: the standard published FreeCell rules as collected at Wikipedia, "FreeCell," including the Baker's Game history and the numbered-deal record; pagat.com's solitaire index for the family; and solitairen.com's Double FreeCell rules for that variant. Read in full and rewritten in our own plain words. Variants are labeled with their names and sources above.