How to play FreeCell

Every card face up from the start — the solitaire that is pure planning, with almost no unwinnable deals.

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FreeCell is the solitaire with no luck in it. Every card is face up from the start, so the deal contains all the information you will ever get, and essentially every deal is winnable — of the original 32,000 numbered deals, exactly one is known to be impossible. If you lose, the deal did not beat you.

The layout

All fifty-two cards are dealt face up into eight columns: four of seven cards and four of six. Above them sit four free cells, each holding exactly one card, and four foundations that build up by suit from Ace to King.

The move rule that actually matters

Strictly, you may only ever move one card. A run appears to move as a group only because the game performs the equivalent single-card moves for you through the free cells and empty columns — which is why the size of the group you can move is limited by how much space you have. The formula is:

(1 + number of empty free cells) × 2^(number of empty columns)

With four free cells and no empty columns you can shift five cards. Free one column and it becomes ten. This is the whole game in one line: space is capacity, and every card you park in a free cell halves what you can do next.

Empty columns

An empty column accepts any card, not just a King, which makes it far more powerful than its Klondike equivalent — and it doubles your move capacity. Filling an empty column is therefore an expensive decision, not a tidy one, and refilling it with a card that cannot leave is how a winnable deal turns into a lost one.

Winning

The game is won when all fifty-two cards reach the foundations. There is no stock, no redeal and no hidden information, so a lost game is always a solvable puzzle you mis-solved — which is exactly why FreeCell rewards thinking ahead more than any other solitaire.

Controls

Drag a card or an ordered run with the mouse or your finger.

Tap or double-click a card to send it to the best available spot.
N new game, U undo.

Strategy tips

Get the Aces and twos out early, but not at any cost — a low card buried under one card is cheap to reach, under five it is a project.
Treat free cells as short-term parking, never storage. A card sitting in a cell for twenty moves has quietly cut your move capacity in half.
Empty columns beat free cells. If you can choose between clearing a column and freeing a cell, clear the column — it doubles capacity rather than adding one.
Plan the whole unstack before you start it. Count the cards you need to move and check the capacity formula first; halfway through is too late.
Do not send everything to the foundations. Keeping a red six in play to accept a black five is often worth more than the card being "safe".
Work on the column that hides the card you actually need, not the column that is easiest to tidy.
When you have no move you like, undo back to the last real branch rather than shuffling cards between cells. Cell-shuffling is how FreeCell games are lost.