Solitaire Odds: How Many Games Can Be Won?
No, not every game of solitaire can be won. How many can depends on the game: almost every FreeCell deal can be won, about 9 in 10 Klondike deals turning one card, and fewer than half of Golf deals. These figures assume you could see every card. You can't, so you'll win fewer than this.
Deals that can be won
| Game | Deals that can be won | How we know |
|---|---|---|
| FreeCell | 99.999% | Published study (Blake & Gent, 2026): all but about 1 deal in 90,000 |
| TriPeaks | 96% | Our solver: 963 of 1,000 deals (95%–97%) |
| Klondike, turn 1 | 90.5% | Published study (Blake & Gent, 2026) |
| Klondike, turn 3 | 81.9% | Published study (Blake & Gent, 2026) |
| Canfield | 71.2% | Published study (Blake & Gent, 2026), for the rules we use: three cards at a time, as many passes as you like |
| Yukon | At least 78% | Our solver: 233 of 300 deals (73%–82%). Longer searches kept finding more wins, so the true figure is higher |
| Pyramid | 65% | Our solver: 650 of 1,000 deals (62%–68%) |
| Golf | 43% | Our solver: 430 of 1,000 deals (40%–46%) |
| Forty Thieves | At least 16% | Our solver: 32 of 200 deals (12%–22%). Longer searches kept finding more wins, so the true figure is higher |
Figures in brackets are the range the true share falls in, 95 times in 100, given how many deals were tried.
Why you win less often than this
Every figure above assumes perfect play by a player who knows where every card is. In Klondike, Yukon, Canfield and Forty Thieves some cards are face down or buried, and in TriPeaks most of the stock is unseen, so a good move can turn out to be a mistake. Real players win less often than these numbers. In Golf and Pyramid you can see nearly every card, so a careful player can get closer to them.
A deal that can't be won isn't your fault, and Undo can't fix it. The daily deals on this site are different: a computer solver wins each one before we publish it, so every daily can be won.
Mahjong Solitaire
Every Mahjong board on this site can be cleared, because we build each one by playing it backwards. What changes is how forgiving a layout is. We matched free pairs at random, with no shuffles, on 3,000 boards of each layout and counted how often the board cleared anyway:
| Layout | Cleared at random |
|---|---|
| Pyramid | 40% (38%–42%) |
| Turtle | 39% (38%–41%) |
| Cross | 28% (27%–30%) |
| Bridge | 21% (20%–23%) |
| Fortress | 13% (12%–14%) |
A thoughtful player does far better than random matching: look for the tile that frees the most others, and take tiles from the top of tall stacks first.
How we measured
- Our figures come from each game's own solver, the same one that checks our daily deals. It played seeded random deals knowing every card and counted a deal as won only when it found a complete winning line. Searches were capped (TriPeaks 2,000,000 positions; Pyramid 2,000,000 positions; Golf 2,000,000 positions; Yukon 1,500,000 positions; Forty Thieves 1,000,000 positions).
- Lower bounds: for Yukon and Forty Thieves, a search 5 to 10 times longer won more of the same deals, so a capped search misses some wins. We show those figures as "at least". For TriPeaks, Pyramid and Golf, the longer search changed almost nothing.
- Klondike, FreeCell and Canfield come from Charlie Blake and Ian Gent, "The Winnability of Klondike Solitaire and Many Other Patience Games", Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research, 2026: Klondike turning one card 90.480% ± 0.116%, turning three 81.945% ± 0.084%, FreeCell 99.998881% and Canfield 71.245% ± 0.031%. Their solver is far more thorough than ours. For Golf they report 45.109%, close to our 43%; small rule differences can account for the gap.
- Rules: each game is played by the rules on its page here. Rule changes such as how many passes through the stock you get change the odds.
- Measured October 10, 2026. Spider isn't included: no reliable figure is published for the 1, 2 and 4 suit games, and our dailies for it are only checked to open with a move.
You're welcome to quote these figures. Please link to this page as the source.
Questions
Is solitaire always winnable?
No. About 1 Klondike deal in 10 can't be won when turning one card, and nearly 1 in 5 when turning three, even with perfect play.
Which solitaire is easiest to win?
FreeCell: almost every deal can be won, and you can see every card from the start. Of the games where some cards are hidden, TriPeaks gives you the best odds.
Which is hardest?
Of the games here, Forty Thieves. Columns build only in one suit and you go through the stock once. Our solver could prove a win in only 16% of deals, though a longer search would find some more.