Freecell Solitaire: A Strategy Guide For Beginners

Freecell Solitaire is a very popular game, made famous by Microsoft. Freecell is included in Windows and is considered by many to be a classic solitaire game. Because you can see ALL the cards from the start, there is no luck involved, making Freecell one of the few solitaire games that is entirely based on player skill.

Freecell is quite a difficult game, but despite that, all deals (except deal number

11982) are solvent in the 32000 offers in the Microsoft version.

USE IMMEDIATE CELLS

The key to clearing Freecell is judicious use of freecells. should be used as

temporary storage – you only store cards in them for a short time to help you get around

longer strings around.

For example, suppose you have a column with the following (taken from deal 14396)

5 Hearts

Ace Spades

Ace Hearts

4 Clubs

In this situation, it is okay to move the 4 of Clubs to a free cell, because we know

that right after that, we can move the two Aces to the foundation, and then move

the 4 of Clubs returns from the free cell to the 5 of Hearts. Look how the freecell was

is it only used temporarily?

SAFE MOVEMENT

There are certain moves you can do at any time in Freecell and know they won’t.

“catch” you later in the game. You can move the Aces (and the twos when they can

played), at any time, since no other card depends on them. For the other cards, you

you can safely move them to the foundation if the cards are one less in rank, otherwise

color, they are already in the foundation. For example, you can safely move the 5th of

Diamonds, if the 4 blacks have already moved to the base.

The best Freecell games will automatically do these safe moves for you, so you can

focus on the movements that matter, instead of having to manually do

inconsequential movements.

THE NEED TO EMPTY COLUMNS

Your first objective in Freecell is to empty a column.

Why is this?

Because an empty column allows you to move longer sequences. the size of

the sequence you can move in Freecell is based on the number of freecells available

and empty columns. The more empty cells and columns you have, the more time

sequence is that it can be moved.

The formula to know how many cards you can move is:

(number of empty freecells + 1) * 2 ^ (num empty columns)

For the less mathematically inclined, here is a table showing how many cards

can move in a few different scenarios…

Empty Freecells		Empty Columns		Card Sequence Length

0				0				1

1				0				2

2				0				3

3				0				4

0				1				2

1				1				4

2				1				6

3				1				8

0				2				4

1				2				8

2				2				12

3				2				16

As you can see, empty columns are particularly valuable, as they allow you to move

considerably longer sequences. By the time you have two free columns (particularly

with two or more free cells), you can move very long sequences, and the game is

usually pretty easy to complete from there.

HOW TO EMPTY COLUMNS

So what is the easiest way to empty a column?

Start by emptying the files that do not have kings. A column with a king

it cannot be emptied initially, because the King has nowhere to go.

Don’t make moves just because you can. Have some mini plan in mind, and just

Move the cards if they help empty the column you are aiming for.

Another popular strategy is to go straight to throw the Aces, and then the

2 etc This strategy is easier and requires less thought. It will work for the easiest

games, but won’t help on tough deals (like the 1941 deal)

However, the most important strategy of all is to try to keep the free cells empty. Yew

you can do that, and empty a couple of columns too, then you should find it very

Easy to finish the game.