Canfield Solitaire, called Demon in Britain, is a Klondike relative with three twists: a 13-card reserve you can only see one card of, foundations that start from whatever rank the deal turns up, and tableau moves that take either one card or a whole column. Those twists change what a good move looks like, so this guide covers the rules first and then works through the decisions they create. You can play Canfield on Cards4.net with hints, undo and saved progress while you read.

The deal and the four piles that matter

One 52-card deck is dealt in a fixed order. Thirteen cards go face down into the reserve and the top one is turned up. The next card starts the first foundation and sets the base rank for every suit. Four cards then start four tableau columns, one card each, and the remaining 34 cards form the stock. The waste begins empty.

Pile Cards4 rule
Reserve 13 cards, only the top card visible and playable
Foundations Four, built up by suit from the base rank, 13 cards each
Tableau Four columns, built down in alternating colors
Stock 34 cards, drawn three at a time, recycled without shuffling, no limit on passes
Waste Only the top card is playable
Group moves One exposed card or an entire column, never part of a column
Empty column Refilled from the reserve at once; after the reserve is gone, only the top waste card may fill it
Win All 52 cards on the foundations

The same seed always produces the same deal, so Reset repeats the layout you just played. Only the reserve's top card and the stock's top packet are ever hidden information; everything else is face up from the start.

Foundations start from the base rank

Every foundation builds upward in its own suit from the base rank, and the ranks wrap from King to Ace. If the deal turns up the 9♦, the diamond foundation already holds the 9, and clubs, hearts and spades each wait for their own 9. Each suit then runs 9, 10, J, Q, K, A, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and the 8 is the thirteenth and final card. This is the first thing to check in a new deal, because an Ace is an ordinary mid-sequence card unless the base happens to be an Ace, and the card that completes a suit is the one directly below the base.

Foundation cards never come back into play on Cards4. Some sites allow you to withdraw a card from a foundation to use it in the tableau; this version follows the rule books that do not, so a card you send up is committed. Undo reverses the action, but there is no legal move that brings the card down again.

Tableau: alternating colors, whole columns only

Tableau columns build downward in alternating colors, and here too the ranks wrap, this time from Ace to King. A red King fits on a black Ace. A red King on a red Ace is illegal, and so is any same-color pairing.

The unusual rule is the group move. You may move the exposed top card of a column, or you may move the entire column onto another column whose top card continues the sequence. What you may not do is move a proper part of a column. If a column holds three cards, the legal counts are one and three; a two-card move from the end of it is refused. In practice this means a long column is either fully mobile or fully stuck, and the card you want is often the one underneath the first card of the column rather than the exposed one.

Empty columns and the reserve

Emptying a column while the reserve still has cards does not give you an empty space. The reserve's top card drops into the gap as part of the same move, the next reserve card is turned up, and Undo takes the whole package back together. You cannot hold a column open or choose what goes into it.

Only after the reserve is empty does a space behave like a space, and even then only the top waste card may fill it. A card from another tableau column cannot be parked there, which is one of the places where Canfield is stricter than Klondike. Some published versions let any available card fill a gap; Cards4 follows the rule books that reserve it for the waste.

The stock: draw three, recycle without shuffling

Drawing turns three cards from the stock onto the waste, with the last one drawn on top, or all remaining cards when fewer than three are left. Only the top waste card is playable. When the stock runs out, recycling moves the whole waste back without shuffling, so the next pass turns up the same packets in the same order. There is no limit on passes.

That last point matters more than it sounds. A pass in which you play nothing leaves the order unchanged, so the next pass shows you exactly the same top cards. Playing a single waste card shifts every card behind it forward by one place, which changes which card ends up on top of each later packet. The stock is not a source of new chances by itself; your removals are.

Cards4 lets you draw at any time, even when a tableau move is available, and it only declares a loss when the stock and waste are both empty and no move remains. While there are cards in the stock, the game will keep letting you cycle them, so recognizing a dead position is part of the skill.

Strategy: ask which card is holding you up

Each foundation is waiting for one specific card, and that card is somewhere: in the reserve, under the first card of a column, or inside a stock packet. Most useful moves in Canfield can be judged by a single question: does this move bring that card closer, or does it push it further away? The positions below come from the Canfield strategy video, listed on the play page, where each one is played out on screen.

Clear the reserve before anything else

The reserve hides twelve cards, and any of them may be the missing starter for a foundation that has not begun. The only way to reach them is to empty tableau columns, because each emptied column takes the next reserve card. Compare a single-card move with a whole-column move: both may be legal, but only the one that empties a column exposes a new reserve card.

In one deal, the 6♣ sits on top of the reserve with nowhere to go, since both red Sevens are already on their foundations and clubs still needs its Eight. Moving the 8♥ onto the 9♣ clears a column, the 6♣ drops into it, and the card turned up beneath it is the 7♠, which starts the missing spade foundation. Sending the 8♥ to its own foundation would have cleared the column just as well; what mattered was choosing a move that emptied a column rather than one that merely tidied the tableau.

Keep the only landing card

Because foundation cards cannot return, banking a card early can remove the only place another card could go. The Q♥ needs a black King to land on. If the K♠ is already banked, the K♣ is her only landing card, and it also happens to be playable to its foundation. Banking it first exposes the A♥, but now every exposed tableau card is red, the Queen is stuck, hearts needs a Jack, and if the stock and waste are empty the deal has no legal move at all.

Undo the King and use him first. The Queen moves onto the King, which exposes the J♥; the Jack goes up, the Queen follows, and only then does the King go to clubs, with the A♣ right behind him. The rule is not to hoard cards away from the foundations. It is to check whether a card is the only available support for something you still need to move, and to bank it once that job is done.

Use a space to release the waste

After the reserve is empty, a space has one legal use, and it is a valuable one. With the 5♣ on top of the waste, no red Six in sight and the club foundation not ready for it, the 5♣ is blocking every card beneath it. Moving it into the empty column uncovers the 7♥, which in a Seven-based deal starts the heart foundation immediately. A space will not take a card from another column, so save it for the moment the waste is the pile that is stuck.

Change the next pass by removing one card

Suppose a Seven-based deal has six cards left in the stock, hearts has not started, and the 8♥ on the tableau is waiting for a 7♥ that must be somewhere in those six. Drawing through them without playing anything, recycling and drawing again shows the same two packets with the same top cards. The Seven stays buried.

Now play the 3♥ from the first packet onto the 4♣ and leave everything else alone. On the next pass the later cards have each moved up one place, and the 7♥ arrives on top of its packet. The removal did not create a card; it changed which card is reachable. Before playing a second waste card, check what that does to the pass as well. In the same deal, playing the 2♣ onto the 3♥ too early shifts the order again, the next packet ends with a 5♠ that has no destination, the 7♥ sits underneath it, and the last draw covers both with a 6♦ that is also blocked. Further passes repeat that problem. The order that works is to reach the Seven, bank it, and only then play the Two, since a card on a foundation can no longer be buried by later waste moves.

Hints, Undo and auto-complete

The Hint button ranks legal moves rather than searching for a win. It prefers playing the reserve card to a foundation, then any foundation play, then the reserve card to the tableau, then a whole-column move while the reserve still has cards, because that move triggers a refill. Ordinary tableau moves and stock draws come last. A hint therefore points at the move that exposes the most, which is usually right, but it does not look ahead to the landing-card problem above.

Undo reverses one action at a time, including the automatic reserve refill that came with an emptied column. Auto-complete is offered only when every reserve card has been turned up and a foundation-only finish has been checked by simulation, so it never depends on a card you cannot see. Deals are random and are not screened for solvability.

Where Canfield came from, and where other versions differ

Mary Whitmore Jones recorded the game in England in 1891 under the name Demon Patience. The American name comes from Richard A. Canfield, who ran the Clubhouse casino in Saratoga Springs from 1894. Some years later he had gamblers buy a deck for $50 (or $52, depending on the source) and paid $5 for every card they placed on the foundations, so a full 52-card finish was worth $2,600. Players lost an average of five or six cards' worth per game, the game never really caught on, and Canfield sold the casino in 1907. Wikipedia notes that the casino may actually have played Klondike rather than Demon, which is why older American rule books sometimes swap the two names.

Published win-rate figures vary too widely to quote with confidence. Wikipedia's summary gives odds of about 1 in 30, while a solver study it cites found roughly 71% of random deals winnable in principle and suggests that expert players might reach about 35% with draw three. Cards4 does not run a solver for Canfield and publishes no win rate, so treat any figure you read elsewhere as applying to that site's rules.

The named variants mostly loosen one rule. Selective Canfield deals five cards after the reserve and lets you choose which becomes the base. Rainbow builds the tableau down regardless of suit with a one-card draw. Storehouse sends the Deuces straight to the foundations and builds by suit. Superior Canfield shows the whole reserve and lets any card fill a gap. Chameleon uses a 12-card reserve and three columns. On Cards4 the two most common relaxations elsewhere, withdrawing a card from a foundation and filling a space from any source, are deliberately not available.

If you know Klondike, the comparison is straightforward. Both games build the tableau in alternating colors and draw from a stock, but Canfield adds the reserve, starts the foundations from a variable rank with wrapping, and allows only whole-column group moves. The Klondike rules guide covers the version with seven columns and partial-sequence moves, and Forty Thieves is the other Cards4 game where single-card moves dominate.

FAQ

Why does my deal start a foundation with a 9 instead of an Ace?

The fourteenth card dealt starts the first foundation, and its rank becomes the base for all four suits. With a 9 base, every suit runs 9, 10, J, Q, K, A, 2 and so on up to the 8, which is the thirteenth and last card. An Ace is only the starting card when the deal happens to turn one up.

The stock keeps showing the same cards. Is the deal lost?

Not necessarily, but nothing will change until you change something. Recycling keeps the waste in its existing order, so a pass with no plays repeats exactly. Playing one waste card moves every later card forward by one place in its packet, and a space or a new tableau landing card can make a blocked card playable. Cards4 declares a loss only when the stock and waste are both empty and no move exists, so deciding to start a new deal is up to you.

Can I draw from the stock while a tableau move is still available?

Yes. Cards4 lets you draw at any time, which is a convenience rather than the compulsory-play rule in some printed versions. Use it to look at the next packet before committing to a move, since Undo can take the draw back.

Why did the Hint suggest moving a whole column onto another column?

Because emptying a column with reserve cards left pulls the next reserve card into play. The hint ranks reserve plays and foundation plays first, then whole-column moves that trigger a refill, and only then ordinary tableau moves. It is pointing at the move that exposes something.

Sources

Watch the game in play

For a visual example of the game discussed here, watch How to Play Canfield Solitaire: Reserve, Foundations and Draw Three. The recording is in English.