Yukon Solitaire
Added 02/2026
Yukon Solitaire: The Rule-Breaking Cousin of Klondike
By Martin Petroff
If you love the foundation-building mechanics of Klondike but hate relying on a randomized stockpile to feed you the cards you need, Yukon Solitaire is a breath of fresh air. In this brilliant variation, all 52 cards are dealt directly onto the board from the very beginning. But the real magic of Yukon lies in its wildly liberating movement rules. Unlike traditional games where you can only move perfectly ordered sequences, Yukon lets you pick up any face-up group of cards—no matter how messy or mixed up they are—as long as the bottom card fits its new destination. It feels like cheating at first, but mastering this freedom requires intense strategic planning.
How to Play
Because there is no stockpile or waste pile, the entire game takes place directly on the tableau. Here is how to set up the board and execute those massive, game-changing moves.
The Objective: Just like Klondike, your goal is to move all 52 cards into four "Foundation" piles at the top of the board, building them up by suit from Ace to King.
The Setup (The Tableau):
Shuffle a standard 52-card deck. There will be no stockpile left over.
Deal the cards into seven columns from left to right.
Column 1: Receives 1 card face up.
Columns 2 through 7: Receive 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 cards dealt face down, respectively (exactly like standard Klondike).
The Yukon Twist: Finally, deal 5 face-up cards onto the bottom of columns 2 through 7. (By the end of the deal, all 52 cards will be on the board, with the rightmost column containing 11 cards).
How to Play:
Building the Columns: You build down the tableau in alternating colors and descending order. (For example, you can place a red 6 onto a black 7).
The "Move Anything" Rule: This is the heart of Yukon. You can grab any face-up card in a column and move it, dragging every single card sitting on top of it along for the ride. The cards you are dragging do not need to be in sequence. The only rule is that the bottom-most card of the group you are moving must form a legal descending, alternating-color sequence with its target card.
Untangling the Mess: Because you can move sloppy, mixed-up stacks, your main strategy is temporarily shifting massive chunks of cards around the board just to expose the face-down cards hiding beneath them.
Revealing Cards: Whenever a face-down card at the bottom of a column is fully exposed, flip it face up. It is now in play.
Empty Columns: If you completely clear one of your seven columns, you can only move a King (and whatever messy stack of cards happens to be sitting on top of it) into that empty space.