How many solitaire games are winnable?
We dealt 100,000 random games of each of six solitaire variants and ran a solver on every one: 600,000 deals in all. The share it could win tells you how often the cards themselves, rather than your play, decide the game. Study run November 2026.
Key findings
- FreeCell: 99,994 of 100,000 deals were solved (99.99%). The other 6 hit the search limit, and none was shown to be unwinnable.
- Klondike, draw 1: at least 81.4% of deals are winnable if you could see every card, and at most 96.9%.
- Klondike, draw 3: at least 71.2%, at most 89.2%. Drawing three cuts the provably winnable share by 10.1 points.
- Spider: at least 86.9% of 1-suit deals, 54.8% of 2-suit deals and 24.5% of 4-suit deals were solved. Most of the rest are undecided, not lost.
Solved, undecided or no solution, by variant
Share of 100,000 deals per variant. Hover or tap a segment for the count.
- Solved
- Undecided
- No solution
The numbers
| Variant | Solved | Undecided | No solution | Winnable |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Klondike, draw 1 | 81,368 | 15,529 | 3,103 | 81.4%–96.9% |
| Klondike, draw 3 | 71,226 | 17,929 | 10,845 | 71.2%–89.2% |
| FreeCell | 99,994 | 6 | 0 | 99.99%–100.0% |
| Spider, 1 suit | 86,904 | 13,096 | 0 | 86.9%–100.0% |
| Spider, 2 suits | 54,757 | 45,243 | 0 | 54.8%–100.0% |
| Spider, 4 suits | 24,479 | 75,521 | 0 | 24.5%–100.0% |
Winnable: the solved share, up to the solved plus undecided share. Each row is 100,000 deals.
How long the winning games are
Moves in the solver's winning line, for every solved deal (the middle 98%). Klondike counts every draw from the stock as a move; FreeCell counts a multi-card move as one. Hover or tap a bar for the count.
How quickly the estimate settles
Share of deals solved after the first N deals of the study.
| Variant | 100 | 300 | 1,000 | 3,000 | 10,000 | 30,000 | 100,000 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Klondike, draw 1 | 83.0% | 79.7% | 79.1% | 80.5% | 81.5% | 81.3% | 81.4% |
| Klondike, draw 3 | 72.0% | 73.3% | 69.8% | 70.4% | 70.5% | 70.8% | 71.2% |
| FreeCell | 100.0% | 100.0% | 100.0% | 100.0% | 99.98% | 99.99% | 99.99% |
| Spider, 1 suit | 83.0% | 87.7% | 86.5% | 86.6% | 86.5% | 86.8% | 86.9% |
| Spider, 2 suits | 55.0% | 56.7% | 54.3% | 55.2% | 54.8% | 54.8% | 54.8% |
| Spider, 4 suits | 23.0% | 26.7% | 25.1% | 25.2% | 25.0% | 24.9% | 24.5% |
What we did
Each deal is a uniformly random shuffle, dealt by the same code that deals Funzzle's games. Deal number n of every variant comes from the seed "study:n", so any result can be reproduced. Klondike was played with unlimited passes through the stock, in draw-1 and draw-3 versions. FreeCell has four free cells. Spider uses two decks, with 1, 2 or 4 suits.
Each deal went to the solver that picks Funzzle's daily deals and powers its hints. Klondike uses a depth-first search (up to 200,000 positions per deal). FreeCell and Spider use a best-first search (up to 100,000). Every position is checked against a table of positions already seen, and moves that can't help are pruned. Every winning line was replayed move by move through the game's real rules before it counted.
Solved, undecided and no solution
Solved means the solver found a winning line: that deal is winnable, no question. No solution means the search tried every line its pruning allows and found none. Undecided means it hit its position limit first: the deal may be winnable, but the solver couldn't show it either way.
So the true winnable share is at least the solved share and at most solved plus undecided. The Spider solver never proves a deal lost (a two-deck game has too many positions to exhaust), so for Spider the solved share is a floor. The 4-suit result says as much about how hard 4-suit Spider is to search as about the deals.
Why a player wins less often
The solver sees every card, including the face-down cards and the order of the stock. A player has to guess which column to dig into and when to use a free cell, so a player's win rate is lower than these figures even with perfect play. Researchers call Klondike with every card visible "thoughtful solitaire".
What the study does show is how often the cards decide the game. Some Klondike deals can't be won however you play. FreeCell, with every card face up from the start, is almost entirely a game of skill.
Using these results
The charts and figures may be quoted or republished with a link to this page. Cite as: Funzzle, "How many solitaire games are winnable?", November 2026, https://www.funzzle.com/solitaire-winnability. For questions about the method, or for the per-deal data, email hello@funzzle.com.
Questions people ask
Is every game of solitaire winnable?
No. In this study 81.4% of Klondike draw-1 deals could be won with every card visible and for 3,103 of 100,000 the solver found no way to win at all. The rest were undecided. With face-down cards, players win fewer.
Is every FreeCell game winnable?
Nearly. Our solver won 99,994 of 100,000 random deals. Of the 32,000 deals in the original Windows FreeCell, only game #11982 is known to be unwinnable.
Why is draw 3 harder than draw 1?
With draw 3 only every third card of the stock is playable on each pass, so a card you need can stay out of reach. In this study the solved share dropped from 81.4% with draw 1 to 71.2% with draw 3.
Why are so many Spider deals undecided?
Spider uses two decks and deals ten new cards at a time, so the number of positions grows very quickly, especially with four suits. The solver stops after 100,000 positions per deal, and many deals that are probably winnable need more search than that.