Klondike has a reputation as a luck game. It is roughly half luck — the deal — and half space management, and the second half is entirely learnable.

Three kinds of move

Every legal move is one of these:

  1. Tableau to tableau — build descending, alternating colour. This is the move that reveals cards, which is the only real progress in the game.
  2. Tableau to foundation — Ace up to King by suit. This scores, but it can also *hurt*: a card moved to the foundation may have been holding a useful sequence down.
  3. Deck to tableau — the draw. This is your refill, and it is finite.

Notice what is missing: there is no move that creates space except emptying a column. That is the whole economy.

A card on the foundation is safe but useless. A card on the tableau is dangerous but useful. Your job is to know which one you need right now.

Empty columns are worth more than points

An empty column accepts any card or any sequence. That makes it the most flexible resource on the board, and the reason beginners lose: they fill an empty column with the first King they see, and lose the flexibility permanently.

Rules that hold up:

  • Empty a column only when doing so reveals a face-down card or unblocks a buried run.
  • Fill an empty column only with a card that needs to be there — usually a King that is itself blocking something.
  • Never fill your last empty column with a card that could have gone to the foundation instead.

Prefer moves that flip a card

The board's difficulty is defined by face-down cards. Each flip removes one unknown, so a move that reveals a face-down card is almost always better than a move that merely tidies the tableau.

When two moves look equally good, choose the one that flips. When they look different, still often choose the flip — tidiness can wait, information cannot.

Foundation discipline

Moving a card up to the foundation is tempting because it feels like progress. It is often a mistake early on, for one specific reason: low cards (2s, 3s, 4s) sitting in the tableau are useful as sequence endpoints, and moving them up can strand a run that needed them.

Two working guidelines:

  • Move to the foundation when the card is not needed as a tableau endpoint, and when you have nothing better to do with the move.
  • Never move a card up if doing so buries the only copy of a card you need — the draw pile may never show it again.

Reading the draw

When you draw, look at what the pile is giving you, not at what you want. If the same card keeps coming up and you cannot place it, that is information: the board is telling you which colour you are short of.

If two or three passes of the deck produce no useful move, the deal is probably dead. Recognising a dead board early is a skill too — it saves the ten minutes you would spend proving it.