Thirteen piles and no reserve

Baker's Dozen Solitaire

Every card is face up from the first move, which sounds generous until you notice what is missing: no stock, no cells, no sequence moves, and an empty column that stays empty for the rest of the game. Nothing is hidden and there is nowhere to hide.

Thirteen columns of four
Nothing hidden
Empty columns stay empty
No stock, no redeal

Foundations0/52

Tableau52

Empty columns0

Moves0

Tableau rule

Only top cards move. Pack down by rank, regardless of suit. Empty columns cannot be filled.

Foundations

Build foundations by suit and keep useful landing ranks exposed.

Thirteen columns, no spaces

Baker's Dozen rules

Barely half a page, because there is no stock, no reserve and no sequence movement. The difficulty is in what the rules leave out.

Baker's Dozen setup and rules
Setup
Deck	One standard 52-card deck.
Tableau	Thirteen columns of four cards. All fifty-two are dealt and every one is face up.
Kings	Any king dealt into a column is moved to the bottom of it before play starts.
Stock	None. There is nothing to draw, nothing in reserve, and no redeal.
Moving
Available cards	The top card of each column — thirteen candidates, and never more.
Building	Down by rank, ignoring suit. Any 6 goes onto any 7.
One at a time	Sequences never travel together. Every card is its own move.
Empty columns	Permanently dead. Once a column is cleared, nothing may ever be placed in it.
Winning
Foundations	Four, built up by exact suit from ace to king.
Win condition	All 52 cards on the foundations.
Losing	No legal move remains. With no stock and no spaces, this happens often.

Kings sunk to the bottom

How to play Baker's Dozen

The whole deck goes into thirteen columns of four, all face up. Before play starts, any king found in a column is slid to the bottom of it — without that rule a king could sit on top of three cards it could never be moved off, and the column would be dead from the deal.

Only the top card of each column moves, and only one at a time. Tableau building ignores suit completely: a 6 goes on a 7 regardless of colour. Foundations are the opposite, strictly by suit from ace to king, and moving all fifty-two cards there wins.

That is the entire ruleset. There is no stock, no waste, no reserve, no free cells and no redeal — the thirteen piles in front of you are the whole game, and the only thing that ever changes is which card is on top of each.

The rule that defines the game

An empty column is a column you have destroyed

In nearly every other solitaire game, emptying a column is the strongest thing you can do. Here it is usually a loss. A cleared column cannot be refilled — not by a king, not by anything — so it simply leaves the game, and you are left playing with twelve piles instead of thirteen.

Since the only resource in Baker's Dozen is the set of thirteen exposed top cards, removing one permanently narrows every future move. Clear a column only when the cards leaving it go somewhere that genuinely helps, and never merely to tidy up.

Placing without spaces

What a thirteen-column table allows

Legal and illegal Baker's Dozen moves
The move	Verdict	Why
A column ends in a 7. You play any 6 onto it.	Legal	Rank only. Suit is irrelevant in the tableau.
A column ends in a 7. You play an 8.	Illegal	Building is strictly downward.
You play a queen into an empty column.	Illegal	Empty columns are dead here. Nothing fills them, ever.
You move an ordered 8-7-6 together.	Illegal	One card at a time, always.
The ace of spades goes to an empty foundation.	Legal	Foundations start with the ace and build up by suit.
The 4 of hearts goes onto the 3 of hearts on a foundation.	Legal	Up by one, same suit.
You take the second card down in a column.	Illegal	Only the top card of a column is available.

Working thirteen piles

Baker's Dozen strategy

Find the aces before you move anything. All four are visible, and how deep each one sits tells you the shape of the whole deal. An ace at the bottom of a column needs three specific cards moved off it, and you can work out right now whether those cards have anywhere to go.

Keep every column alive. Thirteen exposed cards is your entire hand of options, and it only ever shrinks. A board of thirteen shallow piles is far healthier than one of nine piles and four dead spaces, even if the second looks like more progress.

Watch which ranks are exposed rather than which cards you want to move. Because building is rank-only, what matters is the spread of top cards: if every column shows a low card, nothing can be placed anywhere. Try to keep a range of ranks on top so that most cards have a home.

Be slow with the foundations. Aces and twos always go, but each card above that removes a landing place from a game that has very few. If the tableau can still use a 5, leave it there.

Three ways to seal a column

Where Baker's Dozen deals die

Clearing a column at all

In most solitaire games emptying a column is the goal. Here it is usually a mistake. A cleared column is gone from the game — thirteen working piles become twelve, and you have permanently reduced the number of places anything can go. Only empty a column when the cards leaving it are going somewhere genuinely useful.

Packing onto a column that hides a low card

Everything is visible, so burying an ace is entirely avoidable and entirely common. Rank-only building means almost any card will sit on almost any column, which makes the careless move very easy to reach for. Look underneath before you place.

Sending mid cards to the foundations early

Foundations are one-way and there is no stock to replace what you send up. A 6 that goes to a foundation is a 5 that now has one fewer landing place, in a game where landing places are the entire currency.

Dead spaces, live odds

Is Baker's Dozen winnable?

Some deals, and fewer than most players expect from a game where nothing is hidden. Full visibility means a loss is almost always a decision rather than a shuffle — but the ruleset is so narrow that many correct-looking lines run out anyway.

The absence of a reserve is what does it. Every other fully visible game gives you somewhere to put a card that has no home: FreeCell has cells, Flower Garden has a bouquet, Spanish Patience has usable spaces. Baker's Dozen has none of those, so a card with nowhere to go simply stays where it is and blocks whatever is beneath it.

We do not publish a win rate. The great majority of published figures for this game describe versions that allow empty columns to be filled, which is a materially easier game — the one on our Spanish Patience page.

This version

Dead spaces, the strict original

One deck, thirteen columns of four, every card face up.
Kings are moved to the bottom of their column before play begins.
Only the top card of a column moves, one card at a time.
Tableau builds down by rank, ignoring suit.
Empty columns can never be filled.
Foundations build up by exact suit and are one-way.

Undo is unlimited and unpenalised. This is the strict form of the game; if you want the version where spaces can be used, that is Spanish Patience, and it has its own page here.

Against the open boards

How much a usable space is worth

All four of these deal everything face up. What separates them is what you are given to work with when a card has nowhere to go — and Baker's Dozen is the one that gives you nothing.

Baker's Dozen compared with Spanish Patience, Flower Garden, and FreeCell
Game	Empty columns	Kings at deal	Tableau builds	Spare room
Baker's Dozen	Dead — nothing may fill one	Moved to the bottom at deal	Down by rank	None
Spanish Patience	Any available card	Moved to the bottom at deal	Down by rank	None
Flower Garden	Any available card	Left where they fall	Down by rank	A sixteen-card reserve
FreeCell	Any card, and they multiply move capacity	Left where they fall	Down, alternating colour	Four

The first two rows are the same game apart from one word. If you enjoy the thirteen-column shape but find this version airless, Spanish Patience keeps everything and simply lets you use the spaces you make.

Explore

More solitaire games

Try the forgiving version of this game, or a visible builder with room to work.

Tested rules

How this solitaire game is checked

Game logic is implemented and tested by Brian Hamilton, then reviewed by Karan Hamilton for rule clarity, player flow, and correction notes.

How we make and test solitaire games