Solitaire FreeCell

FreeCell is a solitaire card game that stands out for one remarkable trait: nearly every deal is winnable. Unlike most solitaire games where luck plays a major role, FreeCell deals all 52 cards face-up from the start, giving the player complete information. The game provides four "free cells" — temporary storage spaces — that serve as the key strategic resource. The player must build four foundation piles from Ace to King by suit, maneuvering cards through the tableau and free cells.

Rules

1. Tableau: All 52 cards are dealt face-up into 8 columns. The first 4 columns have 7 cards each; the last 4 columns have 6 cards each.
2. Free Cells: Four empty spaces in the upper-left corner. Each can hold exactly one card.
3. Foundations: Four spaces (upper-right), one per suit. Build from Ace up to King.
4. Moving Cards: Only the top card of each column or free cell can be moved. Place cards on the tableau in descending order with alternating colors (red on black, black on red).
5. Supermove: You can move a properly ordered stack of cards as a group, provided there are enough free cells and empty columns to theoretically move them one at a time. The maximum stack you can move equals (1 + number of empty free cells) × 2^(number of empty columns).
6. Empty Columns: Any single card (or valid supermove stack) can be placed on an empty column.
7. Winning: All 52 cards are moved to the foundations.

Strategies

• Plan Several Moves Ahead: With all cards visible, you can (and should) plan sequences of 5-10 moves before acting.
• Preserve Free Cells: Free cells are your most precious resource. Use them sparingly and try to empty them as soon as possible after using them.
• Create Empty Columns: An empty column is worth more than a free cell because it can hold a stack, not just one card. Prioritize emptying short columns.
• Build on Aces Early: Move Aces and low cards to foundations quickly, but keep foundations balanced — a foundation built too far ahead may prevent needed moves on the tableau.
• Unbury Aces: Identify where Aces and Twos are buried and plan a path to uncover them.
• Avoid Filling Free Cells with High Cards: Kings and Queens in free cells are hard to place back usefully. Prefer storing low or mid-range cards temporarily.

FreeCell was invented by Paul Alfille in 1978 while he was a medical student at the University of Illinois. He programmed the first computerized version on a PLATO educational computer system. Alfille's original version used the game mechanics we know today — four free cells, eight tableau columns, and all cards dealt face-up.

The game gained mainstream popularity when Microsoft included it in Windows 95 (and some editions of Windows 3.1 via the Microsoft Entertainment Pack). Jim Horne programmed the Microsoft version, which numbered each deal from 1 to 32,000. This numbering system led to a famous community effort: players systematically attempted to solve every numbered deal. Of the original 32,000 deals, only deal #11,982 was proven to be unsolvable, making the game's win rate an astonishing 99.997%.

Further research by Dave Ring and others extended the analysis to 1 million deals, finding that approximately 99.999% are solvable. This near-perfect solvability, combined with the complete information available to the player, makes FreeCell more a game of skill than luck — closer to a puzzle than a traditional card game.

FreeCell's influence extends beyond gaming. Computer scientists have used the game to study planning algorithms and complexity theory. The game is NP-complete in the general case (arbitrary board sizes), meaning there is no known efficient algorithm to solve all possible configurations. Despite this theoretical difficulty, the standard 52-card version is highly tractable for human players who develop pattern recognition and planning skills.