#Classic solitaire play windows#

Every face-up card in a partial pile, or a complete pile, can be moved, as a unit, to another tableau pile on the basis of its highest card. The four foundations (light rectangles in the upper right of the figure) are built up by suit from Ace (low in this game) to King, and the tableau piles can be built down by alternate colors. The remaining cards form the stock and are placed facedown at the upper left of the layout. The topmost card of each pile is turned face up. The first and left-most pile contains a single upturned card, the second pile contains two cards, and so forth. From left to right, each pile contains one more card than the last. Klondike is played with a standard 52-card deck, without Jokers.Īfter shuffling, a tableau of seven fanned piles of cards is laid from left to right.

Rules Video demonstration of Klondike Layout of Klondike It is considered the most popular version of solitaire.

#Classic solitaire play windows#

Klondike's inclusion in Microsoft Windows in the 1990s contributed significantly to its current popularity. In the 1913 edition of the so-called Official Rules of Card Games, Seven-Card Klondike has become Klondike, with the modification that the pack is run through one card at a time instead of three, and the original Klondike is now being called Canfield. Hoyles calls it a simpler version of 'Klondike', also described in the same book, but which turns out to be a gambling version of the game nowadays known as Canfield in the US and Demon elsewhere in the world. The earliest rules for the game known as Klondike today appear in the 1907 edition of Hoyle's Games under the name 'Seven-Card Klondike'. History Īccording to Tung (2015), the game may well have been named 'Klondike' after the Canadian region where the Klondike Gold Rush happened in 1896–1899. Likewise the rumour prevails that this other game was devised by Richard Canfield even though Canfield himself called his game 'Klondike'. Today, however, Canfield is more usually the American name for the patience game called ' Demon' in England, which is a different game altogether. Historically Klondike was also called Canfield in America, perhaps because it was a casino game at the Canfield Casino in Saratoga Springs, New York, and this is the name by which it became known in England. Elsewhere the game is known as American Patience. Equally in the UK, it is often just known as ' Patience'. and Canada, it is so well known that the term ' Solitaire', in the absence of qualifiers, typically refers to Klondike.

The distinguishing feature of all variants is a triangular layout of the tableau, building in ascending sequence and packing in descending order. It has spawned numerous variants including Batsford, Easthaven, King Albert, Thumb and Pouch, Somerset or Usk and Whitehead, as well as the American variants of the games, Agnes and Westcliff. Klondike, also known as Canfield, is a card game for one player and the best known and most popular version of the patience or solitaire family, as well as one of the most challenging in widespread play. Canfield, Solitaire, Patience, Seven up, SevensĪgnes (Bernauer), Batsford, Easthaven, King Albert, Thumb and Pouch, Somerset or Usk, American Westcliff