Hardest Solitaire Games Ranked by Difficulty (With Win Rates)

Metric	What It Measures	Source
Win Rate	% of deals winnable with optimal play	Combinatorial analysis + simulation
Difficulty (1–5)	Skill ceiling and planning depth required	Editorial rating from play experience
Time	Estimated minutes for a single game	Average across skill levels

For games without a published win rate (like Associations, a word-puzzle variant), we estimate based on difficulty rating and structural similarity to known games.

If you want to build your skills systematically, our solitaire strategy guide covers the core techniques that work across most variants. And if you are brand new, start with the complete guide to playing solitaire first.

The Hardest Solitaire Games (Win Rate Below 10%)

These are the games that will test your patience in both senses of the word. Explore them all in the challenging category.

What is the hardest solitaire card game?

Accordion is the hardest solitaire card game by win rate, winning roughly 1 out of every 100 deals. The difficulty comes from a total lack of free cells or staging areas — every move is a permanent commitment.

Accordion feels like trying to solve a puzzle where someone keeps removing pieces — and with a ~1% win rate, that is essentially what is happening. The goal is to compress the entire deck into one pile by moving cards onto matching rank or suit neighbors. In practice, the pile count explodes immediately and almost never converges. It is the game you play when you want to understand what makes solitaire hard.

Golf (3%) is deceptively simple — just move cards one rank up or down from the waste pile. It feels like flipping through a deck and hoping for the best, because that is mostly what it is. The rules are trivial, but the cards rarely cooperate. Pyramid (5%) feels like it should be solvable. You are just matching pairs that sum to 13. But the pyramid structure blocks cards from above, and the deal frequently creates unbreakable locks.

Clock is a paradox in this tier: it has a 7.7% win rate but a difficulty rating of just 1/5. That is because it is pure luck — you flip cards mechanically with zero decisions. You either win or you don't. It feels less like a game and more like a card trick you perform on yourself.

Canfield was the original casino solitaire, invented so gambling halls could charge players $52 for a deck and pay $5 per card built on the foundations. Playing it feels like the house is watching you lose with a smile. The house edge was massive for a reason — the 8% win rate reflects that.

Scorpion and Spider (4-suit) both clock in at 8%. Scorpion's seven-column layout seems manageable until blocked stacks multiply across the board — it feels like watching a traffic jam form in slow motion. Spider 4-suit is the hardest version of what many consider the most strategically rich solitaire family — you need to sequence all four suits simultaneously, and one wrong move can bury critical cards for the rest of the game.

Is Spider Solitaire harder than Klondike?

Yes, significantly. Spider 4-suit has an 8% win rate compared to Klondike's 82%. Spider demands that you manage four suits across ten columns simultaneously, while Klondike only requires alternating colors. Even Spider 2-suit is substantially harder than Klondike.

The Middle Ground (Win Rate 10–50%)

These games lose more often than they win, but not so lopsidedly that success feels random. Skill matters — a lot.

Forty Thieves uses two full decks, ten columns of four cards each, and a single-card draw from stock. It feels like managing a warehouse where every shelf is too full and you can only move one item at a time. Win rates hover around 10%. The sheer volume of cards buried under one another means most games end in gridlock long before the foundations fill.

La Belle Lucie is visually elegant — 17 fans of three cards each — but the stacking rules give you almost no room to maneuver. At 10% win rate, it is one of those games you play for the experience of solving it, not the expectation of winning. It feels like arranging flowers while wearing boxing gloves.

Russian Solitaire (13%) applies a suit-only constraint to Yukon's open tableau. That single rule change transforms a 25% game into a 13% one. It feels like someone took a game you could handle and tightened every screw. Seahaven Towers (14%) is FreeCell with only four cells and a strict same-suit-only build rule — it feels like FreeCell after a budget cut.

Easthaven (25%), Gaps (25%), and Yukon (25%) form a natural grouping of games that reward careful sequencing but frequently hit unwinnable positions.

Yukon deserves special mention. It looks like Klondike — same seven-column tableau — but there is no stock pile. Every card is face-up from the start, giving you full information. Despite that advantage, win rates drop to 25% because move options are far more constrained. It feels like playing Klondike with the training wheels removed.

Sir Tommy sits at 45% and punishes impulsive play. It is structurally simple (four discard piles, no tableau movement), but irreversible decisions make every card placement high-stakes. It feels like stacking boxes in a closet — once something goes in, it is not coming back out.

Calculation lands at exactly 50% — a pure coin flip at the population level, but inside each deal, only decision quality determines the result. It feels like the fairest test of solitaire skill in the entire database.

The Easiest Solitaire Games (Win Rate Above 50%)

The games in this tier win more often than they lose. They are ideal for casual play, learning the ropes, or unwinding without frustration.

Carpet (55%), Double Klondike (55%), and TriPeaks (55%) cluster at the same win rate but feel completely different. Carpet is a simple layout game — relaxing like sorting mail. Double Klondike doubles the classic experience with two decks, adding complexity but keeping odds fair. TriPeaks is fast and breezy, the solitaire equivalent of a five-minute coffee break.

Busy Aces (65%) is an accessible building game that feels encouraging — good odds, straightforward rules, and a satisfying rhythm once you find it.

Baker's Dozen reaches 75% through clever design: all Kings move to the bottom of their columns at the start, eliminating the most common blocking problem. It is orderly and satisfying — like solving a puzzle where someone kindly sorted the edge pieces for you. Browse all beginner-friendly variants in the easy category.

Klondike sits at 82% winnable and is the game most people picture when they hear "solitaire." That 82% assumes optimal play — casual players typically win 30–40% of the time because they miss non-obvious moves early in the game. It feels familiar and forgiving, like an old friend who never gets too competitive.

What solitaire game has the highest win rate?

FreeCell has the highest practical win rate at 99.999% solvable — only one deal out of the original Microsoft 32,000 (deal #11982) is proven unwinnable. Penguin is even higher at nearly 100%, and Eight Off matches FreeCell at 99%.

Eight Off and FreeCell share a 99% win rate and a freecell-family structure. Both are pure skill — almost no luck involved. Eight Off gives you eight free cells instead of four, which sounds easier, but the larger board creates more complex decision trees. FreeCell feels like a logic puzzle with a guaranteed solution — because it almost always is one.

Penguin tops the entire list with a near-perfect win rate. It is a FreeCell-family game where the starting position is dealt from a single base card, making most games solvable with careful planning. The catch: it demands more strategic thinking than the win rate implies. Penguin feels like the kindest teacher in solitaire — forgiving, but still expecting you to think.

What Makes a Solitaire Game Hard?

Four factors determine difficulty, and most hard games combine several of them.

Luck vs. skill ratio. Clock and Golf have terrible win rates despite low skill ceilings because the deal determines almost everything. FreeCell has a 99% win rate because the deal is almost never the limiting factor — your decisions are. High-skill games convert luck into tractable problems; low-skill games don't give you that lever.

Hidden information. Klondike hides face-down cards in tableau columns. Every face-down card is a commitment you can't undo. Yukon and FreeCell deal everything face-up, which is why their win rates are higher despite comparable structural complexity.

Move constraints. Free cells and empty columns are the currency of solitaire. FreeCell gives you four free cells and allows empty columns freely. Seahaven Towers gives you four cells but restricts empty columns dramatically. Accordion gives you no free cells at all — every move is irreversible placement.

Multiple decks. Double Klondike (two decks, 55% win rate) and Forty Thieves (two decks, 10% win rate) show that more cards don't inherently mean harder — it depends on how many moves you can make. Forty Thieves buries cards under massive columns with a single-card draw. Double Klondike deals them into a familiar tableau structure.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the hardest solitaire card game?

Accordion wins roughly 1% of the time, making it the hardest by win rate. Pyramid and Golf are close competitors. If you are after the hardest game that still rewards skill (rather than one that is just luck-limited), Spider 4-suit or Forty Thieves are the right challenges.

Can you win every game of solitaire?

No — whether every deal is winnable depends entirely on the variant. FreeCell comes closest at 99.999% solvable, but even it has one famously unwinnable deal (#11982). Most variants have a significant percentage of deals that are mathematically impossible to win regardless of skill. Accordion at 1% means 99 out of 100 deals have no solution.

What is the easiest solitaire game?

Penguin has the highest win rate at nearly 100%, but it requires genuine strategy. If you want the easiest possible experience — where decisions barely matter — Clock is fully automated. For the best balance of accessibility and actual gameplay, FreeCell wins nearly every deal and teaches you real solitaire skills.

Is Klondike easy or hard?

Klondike is medium difficulty — 82% of deals are theoretically winnable, but most players only win around 30% of the time. The gap between what is possible and what most people achieve comes from early-game decisions about which face-down cards to expose. It is forgiving enough to be fun, demanding enough to keep you thinking.

Which solitaire game has the lowest win rate?

Accordion at 1% is the lowest in our database. Second is Golf at 3%, followed by Pyramid at 5%. All three are low because the deal structure creates frequent deadlocks that no amount of skill can escape — though in Accordion's case, good play can improve your odds meaningfully over pure random moves.

Should I start with FreeCell or Klondike?

Start with Klondike if you want the classic experience and don't mind occasional unwinnable deals. Start with FreeCell if you want to develop real strategic thinking — every loss in FreeCell is a mistake you can learn from, which makes it a better teacher. Once you are comfortable with either, Yukon and Baker's Dozen are excellent next steps toward harder variants.