Solitaire odds and winnability
How often a solitaire game can be won depends heavily on which game you play, and the spread is wide. FreeCell is winnable in nearly every deal; Golf less than half the time. Klondike, the classic, sits around 82 to 90% with perfect play, but real players win far less because the face-down cards stay hidden.
None of the deals here are pre-filtered to be winnable, so these figures describe the odds you actually play against. The table sums up where each game stands, and the questions below go deeper on each one. The Golf and Pyramid figures come from solving every legal line of play with the same engines this site runs on; the Klondike and FreeCell figures come from published research.
Winnability by game
| Game | Winnable rate | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Klondike, draw 1 | about 90.5% | published research, perfect-information play |
| Klondike, draw 3 | about 81.9% | published research, perfect-information play |
| FreeCell | about 99.997% | 31,999 of the original 32,000 Windows deals |
| Golf | 45.6% | our own solve of 500 deals |
| Pyramid | at least 60.6% | our own solve of 500 deals |
| Spider | no reliable figure by suit count | community: 4-suit is much harder |