Play FreeCell online

All 52 cards are dealt face up into eight tableau columns: four columns of seven cards and four of six. Above them sit four free cells, each able to hold one card, and four foundations, one for each suit.

The goal is to move every card to the foundations, building each suit from ace up to king. Because nothing is hidden, luck plays almost no part. Success comes from planning the order of your moves.

FreeCell shares its tableau rule with Klondike, then adds the free cells that give the game its name.

• Tableau: place a card on the next-higher card of the opposite color, such as a red 9 on a black 10.
• Free cells: any single exposed card can wait in an empty free cell and return to play later.
• Empty columns: any card or legal run can fill an empty column.
• Foundations: build each suit upward from ace to king.
• Moving runs: a run can move together when there is enough free space to move it one card at a time.

Officially FreeCell moves one card at a time, but a run can travel together whenever it could have been moved card by card through the free space available. GameCamp does that bookkeeping for you.

The limit is the number of empty free cells plus one, doubled for every empty column you are not moving into. With two empty free cells and one empty column, for example, you can move a run of six cards onto another column.

Every deal on GameCamp is taken from 10,000 deals a solver has already won: 3,000 Easy, 4,000 Medium, and 3,000 Hard. New game picks one at random from the difficulty you choose, and Restart replays the same deal.

• Easy: room to plan and build your way through.
• Medium: more rearranging and tighter use of the free cells.
• Hard: plan further ahead with less room to rearrange.

Drag a card or run to a free cell, foundation, or column, or select it and then select where it goes. Double-click a card to send it to the best available spot.

Undo and Redo step through your moves, Hint finds a move on a winning path from your current position, and Auto finish sends cards that are safe to move up to the foundations for you.

With every card visible, the best FreeCell players spend a moment planning before the first move and keep as much free space open as they can.

• Find the aces and twos buried deepest and plan how to reach them first.
• Keep free cells empty as long as possible. Each occupied cell shrinks the runs you can move.
• An empty column is worth more than a free cell, because it doubles the size of the runs you can move.
• Build long ordered runs in the tableau instead of parking cards in free cells.
• Send low cards to the foundations early, but keep a card in the tableau while you still need it to build on.
• Use Undo to test a line of play. Every deal is winnable from the start.