Twenty-four looks at the deck

Hard Solitaire

Klondike with the safety rails taken off. Cards come off the stock three at a time, you get three passes and no more, foundations lock the moment a card lands, and the stock count is hidden. One undo, if you want it.

Draw three
Three passes only
Foundations lock
One undo, or none

UndoTimerMovesDraw threeThree passesNo hintsBlind stock

Foundations0/52

StockHidden

Pass1/3

Time7:00

Moves0/150

Hidden21

Stock and waste

Waste empty

Draw three cards. Only the top waste card is playable.

Locked foundations

Draw three. Three passes. No hints.

Klondike, tightened

Hard Solitaire rules

The base game is Klondike. This table covers what it is and everything this page tightens.

Hard Solitaire setup and rules
The base game
Deck	One standard 52-card deck.
Layout	Seven columns of 1 to 7 cards with 21 face down, four foundations, stock and waste.
Tableau	Builds down in alternating colours. Foundations build up by exact suit.
Goal	All 52 cards onto the foundations.
What makes it hard
Stock	Draw three at a time. Only the top card of the waste is ever playable.
Passes	Three trips through the stock in total. After the third, the waste order is final.
Foundations	Locked. A card sent up never comes back down to the tableau.
Empty columns	Kings, or king-led runs, only.
Undo	One per deal by default, and it can be switched off entirely.
Stock count	Hidden. You have to track what is left yourself.
Help	No hints and no highlighted destinations.
Optional pressure
Timer	Seven minutes by default; five minutes or off.
Move cap	150 moves by default; 100 or uncapped. Running out ends the deal.
Deals	Random and unfiltered. Some cannot be won by anyone.

Where the difficulty comes from

Six restrictions, and what each one costs you

None of these change the goal or the movement rules. They change what you are allowed to find out and how often you are allowed to be wrong, which turns out to matter far more.

What each restriction does
Restriction	What it changes	How much it costs
Draw three	Two cards in every three are skipped on a pass, and the ones you skip depend on what you have already played.	Severe. This is the change that does most of the work.
Three passes only	The stock stops being a renewable resource and becomes a budget.	Severe when combined with draw three — you get roughly 24 useful looks at the deck, total.
Locked foundations	A card on a foundation is gone. It cannot come back to hold a tableau card.	Large. Every foundation move above a 2 is now an irreversible commitment.
One undo	You get a single mistake per deal, or none if you set it to off.	Large in practice, mostly because it removes exploratory play.
Blind stock count	The number of cards left in the stock is hidden.	Moderate. It stops you counting your way to a known card.
No hints or highlights	Nothing tells you a move exists.	Moderate. Mostly a speed penalty, which matters when the timer is on.

The mechanic that decides deals

Why draw three hides two thirds of the deck

Twenty-four cards go to the stock. Drawing three at a time means eight draws to get through it, and only the card that lands on top of each triple can be played. The other two are buried underneath it.

The part that surprises people is what happens when you recycle. If you played nothing, the waste turns back over in the same order and the same eight cards land on top again. Not similar cards — the identical eight. Sixteen of your twenty-four stock cards are not merely hard to reach; they are unreachable, permanently, until something changes the alignment.

Lands on top of the waste
Buried underneath

Playing one card off the waste is what breaks the pattern. Remove a card and the triples re-group around the gap, so a different set surfaces next time round. In a game with unlimited passes that is a curiosity. With three passes it is the single most important decision you make — which is why the plan below spends the first pass buying information rather than making progress.

Count them

Three passes is about twenty-four opportunities

Eight reachable cards per pass, three passes: roughly two dozen chances for the stock to give you something, and fewer than that in practice because the alignment only shifts when you spend a card. The stock is not a resource you dip into when the tableau stalls. It is a budget, and most lost deals here are lost by treating it as the former.

The pass counter above the board shows where you are. When it reads 3/3, everything still in the stock that you have not already surfaced is gone.

A plan for the stock

How to spend three passes

Hard mode rewards a completely different rhythm from ordinary Klondike. In the standard game you can afford to cycle idly. Here every draw costs part of a finite budget, so the passes need different jobs.

What each pass is for

Pass one: look, do not spendDraw all the way through without forcing anything. You are building a picture of what the stock holds and where the aces are, not making progress.
Break the alignment deliberatelyPlaying a single card off the waste shifts which cards surface on the next pass. If pass one showed nothing useful, that one move is worth more than any tableau tidying.
Pass two: take everything you canThis is the productive pass. Anything playable should go, because the third pass is your last and it will not present the same cards.
Pass three: foundations onlyBy now the tableau is as good as it will get. Spend the final pass on cards that go straight up, and accept the deal if they do not appear.

The irreversible one

Locked foundations change every decision

In the standard game a foundation card can be borrowed back down to hold a tableau card, which makes early foundation moves recoverable. Here they are not. A card that goes up is out of the game as a landing spot for good.

The practical rule is harsher than it sounds: past the aces and twos, a foundation move should only happen when you can see that nothing in the tableau will want that card, or when it directly unblocks something. Sending both red 5s up because they fit is how a promising deal quietly becomes unwinnable — and with one undo, you get to reverse exactly one of those.

Combined with king-only empty columns, this is why hard mode punishes tidiness. A neat board with locked foundations and no spaces is a dead board.

Can it be beaten?

Can Hard Solitaire actually be won?

Yes, but a meaningful share of deals cannot be, and there is no way to know from the opening which. Deals are randomly shuffled and are not filtered for solvability, so a dead deal is a real outcome rather than a failure of play — the same as standard Klondike, except draw three and the three-pass limit push more deals into that category.

We do not publish a win rate. With a timer, a move cap and an undo setting all adjustable, any single figure would describe one configuration and mislead about the rest. If you want a game that is hard by design rather than by restriction, the honest recommendation is Forty Thieves: two decks, strict same-suit packing, and no settings to soften.

This version

Exactly how hard this page is set

Draw three, three passes total. The opening run counts as pass one.
Foundations are one-way. No card ever returns to the tableau.
Empty columns take a king or a king-led run, nothing else.
One undo per deal by default; set it to off for a stricter game.
Stock count hidden, no hints, no highlighted destinations, no peek.

Timer and move cap are optional and default to seven minutes and 150 moves. Turning both off leaves a strict but untimed draw-three Klondike, which is the closest thing here to the traditional casino ruleset.

Exactly how hard

Hard mode against the alternatives

Hard Solitaire compared with Klondike, Easy Solitaire, and Forty Thieves
Game	Stock	Foundations	Undo	Extra pressure
Hard Solitaire	Draw three, 3 passes	Locked	One, or none	Timer and move cap
Klondike	Draw one, unlimited	Cards can return	Unlimited	None
Easy Solitaire	Draw one, unlimited	Cards can return	Unlimited	Deals checked as winnable
Forty Thieves	Draw one, one pass	Locked	Unlimited	Two decks, same-suit packing

Explore

More solitaire games

Step back to the standard rules, or find something hard by design instead of by setting.

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

Hard Solitaire

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