FreeCell Solitaire | Play FreeCell Online for Free
FreeCell is the open-information solitaire. All 52 cards are dealt face-up at the start, so there is no luck of the draw and no hidden information — every deal can be analyzed completely before you make your first move. Four "free cells" along the top of the board each hold a single card as temporary storage, four foundations build up by suit from Ace to King, and the eight tableau columns build down in alternating colors. The famous property of FreeCell is that almost every deal is solvable: only a tiny handful of starting positions have no winning line at all.
How to Play
- All 52 cards are dealt face-up into eight tableau columns. The first four columns receive 7 cards each; the last four receive 6 cards each.
- Four free cells at the top can each hold a single card as temporary storage.
- Build tableau columns down in alternating colors. Foundations build up by suit from Ace to King.
- Move single cards freely. Multi-card moves are limited by the supermove formula: (free_cells + 1) × 2^(empty_columns).
- Empty tableau columns accept any card — they are not King-only as in Klondike.
- Use the ?ms=N URL parameter to load a specific Microsoft FreeCell deal number (1 through 32,000,000 supported).
- Use Undo to reverse moves, Hint to surface a productive move, and Auto-complete to cascade the deck once the position is provably won.
- You win when all 52 cards reach the foundations.
Strategy
Treat free cells as precious. Every card sitting in a free cell is one less card the engine can move in a single supermove, and free cells are easy to use and hard to clear. The best FreeCell players frequently win with one or zero free cells used at any given moment. If you find yourself with all four free cells occupied, you have almost certainly lost — the supermove formula collapses and most tableau reorganizations become impossible.
Build foundations evenly. Sending the Ace of Hearts to the foundation and then aggressively building hearts up to Ten while the other suits sit at Ace creates a future bottleneck: you will need low red hearts as landing spots for black sequences later in the game. Try to keep all four foundations within two ranks of each other through the midgame, then accelerate the laggards once the tableau is sufficiently cleared.
Plan empty columns deliberately. The first empty column you create is worth roughly double a free cell because it both stores a card and doubles your supermove capacity. Subsequent empty columns are even more valuable — the third empty column lets you move eight cards as a unit with two free cells, which is enough to relocate a long sequence in a single drag. Open columns are usually the right midgame goal.
Use the Microsoft deal numbers to learn from canonical games. Deals like #1 (the first Microsoft FreeCell deal) and #617 (the first deal Microsoft shipped as a tutorial) have been solved publicly many times. Playing through a known-solvable deal and then looking up the canonical solution is one of the fastest ways to absorb FreeCell strategy patterns.
History
FreeCell was invented by Paul Alfille in 1978 as a programming exercise on the PLATO educational computing platform at the University of Illinois. Alfille wanted a solitaire that was almost always winnable so that the puzzle aspect would dominate over the luck-of-the-draw aspect that characterizes Klondike. His original PLATO implementation included the four free cells and the supermove mechanic that define the modern game. FreeCell remained an obscure PLATO-community curiosity for over a decade until Microsoft engineer Jim Horne ported it to Windows in 1991, where it shipped as part of Microsoft Entertainment Pack 2 and (later) as a bundled solitaire with Windows itself. Microsoft's implementation numbered deals from 1 through 32,000, and the company quickly issued a challenge: solve every deal. The community discovered that all but one of those first 32,000 — deal #11982 — could be solved with perfect play, and mathematicians extended the search past that range to find a handful of additional unsolvable deals at #146692, #186216, #455889, #495505, #512118, #517776, and #781948. FreeCell is now considered one of the most thoroughly analyzed solitaire games in history, and Alfille's "almost always solvable" design has made it the favorite of players who want skill, not luck, to determine the outcome.
Extended Guide
The deal is fixed and visible. Eight tableau columns receive the entire deck, with the first four columns getting 7 cards each and the last four getting 6 cards each. Every card is face-up. Above the tableau sit four empty free cells and four empty foundations. The free cells are single-card slots — each can hold exactly one card at a time, no matter the rank or suit — and they serve as temporary storage while you reorganize the tableau.
Tableau columns are built downward in alternating colors. A red Six can land on a black Seven; a black Five can land on the red Six. Single cards always move freely between tableau columns, free cells, and foundations as long as the destination accepts them. Multi-card moves between tableau columns are possible but constrained: the number of cards you can move in a single drag is limited by how many free cells and empty columns are currently available, because the engine has to be able to break the run into individual moves under the hood.
The "supermove" formula is (free_cells + 1) × 2^(empty_columns). With one empty free cell and no empty columns you can move two cards as a unit; with two free cells and one empty column you can move six. Knowing the supermove limit at each moment is the central tactical skill in FreeCell — players who internalize it can plan long sequence reorganizations several moves in advance.
Foundations build upward by suit, starting with Ace. Once an Ace is on the foundation you can stack the matching Two, then Three, and so on up to King. Cards on the foundation are not frozen — the engine lets you pull a card back to the tableau if it helps clear a stuck position — but in practice most players treat foundations as one-way because the supermove math rarely makes a foundation return worthwhile.
Empty tableau columns are extremely valuable. Unlike Klondike, FreeCell lets any card fill an empty column, so vacant columns act as oversized free cells with the additional benefit of unlocking longer supermoves. The single most important midgame skill is knowing when to spend an empty column to clear a difficult buried card and when to hold it open as supermove leverage.
FreeCell's most famous attribute is the solvability rate. With perfect play, virtually every random FreeCell deal has at least one solution. The historical Microsoft FreeCell deal numbering covered deals 1 through 32,000, of which all but a handful were proven solvable; the eight known unsolvable deals among the first 32,000 include the infamous #11982 and #146692 (the latter outside the original Microsoft range). You can reproduce any classic Microsoft deal here by appending ?ms=N to the URL — for example, /freecell?ms=617 loads the same starting position that Microsoft FreeCell labelled "Game #617" in 1995.
You win when all 52 cards reach the foundations. You lose only when no legal move remains, which on a solvable deal means you have run out of supermove headroom and committed to an unrecoverable sequence. Use Undo liberally — FreeCell rewards exploration — and use Auto-complete to cascade the rest of the deck once the position is provably won.
The mobile interface puts the four free cells and four foundations along the top edge with the tableau spread below. Touch-and-hold a card to lift it together with any cards above it (subject to the supermove limit), or tap a card to send it to the best legal destination. The page renders cards as Unicode characters so it loads instantly on slow connections, and the deal number is shown in the corner whenever you started from a Microsoft deal URL.
Glossary
- Free cell
- One of four single-card buffer slots above the tableau. Any card can be parked here temporarily, but each slot holds exactly one card at a time.
- Supermove
- The maximum number of cards movable as a unit between tableau columns, equal to (free_cells + 1) multiplied by 2 to the power of empty_columns.
- Microsoft deal number
- A numeric identifier (1 through 32,000,000) that reproduces an exact Windows FreeCell starting position. Append ?ms=N to the URL.
- Foundation
- One of four piles built upward by suit from Ace to King. The win condition.
- Tableau column
- One of eight columns where all 52 cards start face-up. The entire deal is visible before the first move.
- Empty column
- A tableau column with no cards. Doubles supermove capacity and acts as temporary storage during complex reorganizations.
- Open information
- The defining property of FreeCell: all 52 cards are face-up from the start, so no hidden information exists.
Beginner Tips
- Treat free cells as emergency buffers, not parking lots. Each occupied free cell cuts your supermove capacity. Aim to keep at least two free cells open at any time.
- Build all four foundations at roughly the same pace. Racing one suit to Ten while others sit at Ace forces you to use low cards of that suit as tableau landing targets later.
- Empty columns are worth more than free cells for supermove math. Creating an open column usually doubles how many cards you can move in a single action.
- Use the Microsoft deal number in the URL to revisit a specific game or share a challenge: append ?ms=617 to try the classic Windows tutorial deal.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is FreeCell?
FreeCell is an open-information solitaire game. All 52 cards start face-up across eight tableau columns, with four free cells above for temporary storage and four foundations to build up by suit from Ace to King. The defining property of FreeCell is that almost every deal is solvable with perfect play — only a tiny handful of starting positions have no winning line at all.
What does ?ms=N do in the URL?
A Microsoft deal number reproduces the exact original FreeCell deal from the classic Windows game. For example, /freecell?ms=617 loads the same starting position that Microsoft FreeCell shipped as "Game #617" in 1995. Valid numbers are 1 through 32,000,000.
Which Microsoft deals are unsolvable?
Within the first 32,000 deals Microsoft originally shipped, only deal #11982 has been proven unsolvable. In the extended numbering space up to 32,000,000, additional unsolvable deals exist at #146692, #186216, #455889, #495505, #512118, #517776, and #781948. Every other Microsoft-numbered deal has at least one solution with perfect play.
What is the supermove rule?
The number of cards you can move as a single unit between tableau columns is (free_cells + 1) × 2^(empty_columns). With one empty free cell and no empty columns you can move two cards; with all four free cells empty and one empty column you can move ten. Knowing the current supermove limit is the central tactical skill in FreeCell.
What goes in an empty tableau column?
Any card — FreeCell does not have Klondike's King-only rule for empty columns. Empty columns are extremely valuable because they both store a card and double the supermove capacity, so deciding when to spend an empty column and when to hold it open is the central midgame skill.
Can I move a card from the foundation back to the tableau?
Yes. The engine allows foundation cards to be returned to the tableau if doing so is legal. In practice most players treat foundations as one-way because the supermove math rarely makes a foundation return worthwhile, but the option exists for the rare endgame situations that need it.
Is the game free to play?
Yes. FreeCell plays instantly in your browser with no signup, no ads, and no in-app purchases. Your single-player history is stored on your device until you decide to sign in.