How many solitaire deals can actually be won?

October 21, 2026 6 min read

When you lose, was it you or the cards? We gave 200 deals of every game on Solitaire Land to a program that searches every possible move. Some games can almost always be won. In one, most deals are lost before you make a single move.

A lost game of solitaire has two possible explanations: you missed the way through, or there never was one. Last week we counted how often people win each game. This week we asked a different question: how many deals can be won at all? To answer it, we didn't ask people. We asked a computer.

How a computer plays solitaire

We wrote a solver: a program that plays a deal by trying moves, remembering every position it has seen, and always carrying on from the most promising one. It uses exactly the same rules as the games on this site. And unlike you, it can see every card, including the face-down ones. That is how researchers measure whether a deal can be won, even though no player can see those cards.

For every deal, the solver ends in one of three ways:

Solved: it found a way to win. Every solution is played back move by move by the game's own rules before it counts.
Proven lost: it tried every position that can be reached from the deal, and none of them wins. This is a proof, not a guess.
Not settled: it stopped after 150,000 positions without an answer. The deal may or may not be winnable.

We gave it 200 deals of each of our 26 games: 5,200 deals in all.

The results

The share of winnable deals lies somewhere between the first column and 100% minus the second. The last column is what players have done: of the random deals played at least five times on Solitaire Land, how many somebody has won. It only appears for games where enough deals have been played.

Game	Solved	Proven lost	Not settled	Deals won at least once
Wasp II Solitaire	97.0%	2.5%	0.5%	–
Five Bridges Solitaire	95.5%	0.0%	4.5%	–
FreeCell Solitaire	95.0%	0.0%	5.0%	99.9%
Hole In One Solitaire	94.5%	0.0%	5.5%	–
Spider Solitaire 1 Suit	91.5%	0.0%	8.5%	100.0%
Diamond Solitaire	91.0%	0.0%	9.0%	–
Bunches Solitaire	89.0%	0.0%	11.0%	–
Scorpion Solitaire 1 Suit	86.5%	0.0%	13.5%	–
Reverse Tripeaks Solitaire	85.5%	0.0%	14.5%	–
Wasp Solitaire	83.0%	15.0%	2.0%	–
Fourpeaks Solitaire	81.5%	0.0%	18.5%	–
Tripeaks Solitaire	78.0%	0.0%	22.0%	94.1%
Yukon Solitaire	75.0%	0.0%	25.0%	66.9%
Alaska Solitaire	73.0%	10.5%	16.5%	40.1%
Klondike Solitaire 1 Card	58.0%	1.5%	40.5%	85.6%
Scorpion Solitaire 2 Suits	57.0%	0.0%	43.0%	–
Spider Solitaire 2 Suits	53.5%	0.0%	46.5%	98.4%
Klondike Solitaire 3 Cards	49.0%	8.5%	42.5%	53.6%
Weave Solitaire	42.0%	0.0%	58.0%	–
Bipeaks Solitaire	41.5%	0.0%	58.5%	–
Suspension Solitaire	33.5%	0.0%	66.5%	–
Scorpion II Solitaire	21.5%	29.0%	49.5%	–
Three Blind Mice Solitaire	17.5%	25.5%	57.0%	–
Scorpion Solitaire	14.5%	57.5%	28.0%	49.2%
Russian Solitaire	6.5%	93.0%	0.5%	7.4%
Spider Solitaire 4 Suits	0.0%	0.0%	100.0%	95.4%

Russian Solitaire: most deals are lost before the first move

This is the clearest result in the table. The solver proved that 93.0% of Russian Solitaire deals cannot be won at all, most of them within a few hundred positions, and it won 6.5%. Players, across 20,063 deals, have won 7.4% of them. Two completely different methods, the same answer: Russian Solitaire is not so much hard as mostly impossible. If you lose a game, it was very probably never winnable. Want a deal that can be won? Press Winnable: those deals have all been won before.

Scorpion: more than half of the deals are lost from the start

In Scorpion Solitaire, 57.5% of the deals are proven lost, so at most 42.5% can be won. Players have won 49.2% of the deals they tried. That is a different set of deals, so the two numbers don't match exactly, but the picture is the same: about half of all Scorpion deals have no way through. Scorpion players are doing very well. It's the deals that are against them.

Alaska: winnable, but hard

Alaska Solitaire is the opposite case. The solver wins 73.0% of the deals, but players have only ever won 40.1% of the deals they tried. Most Alaska deals have a way through that people don't find. If you want a game where practice pays off, this is it.

FreeCell and Spider 1 suit: almost always a way through

The solver wins 95.0% of FreeCell Solitaire deals and 91.5% of Spider Solitaire 1 Suit deals, and the rest only ran out of time. Players agree: they have won 99.9% and 100.0% of the deals they tried. In these games, a loss is almost never the deal's fault. Undo, think again, and try another way.

Klondike: easier for you than for a computer

Klondike Solitaire 1 Card is hard for the solver. It solved 58.0% of the deals and proved only 1.5% lost. The other 40.5% were not settled, because turning the stock over again and again creates millions of positions.

Researchers at the University of St Andrews (Blake and Gent) ran a much bigger search: about 90% of one-card Klondike deals and 82% of three-card deals can be won by someone who can see every card. People can't, and still win 85.6% of the one-card deals and 53.6% of the three-card deals they try. With three cards, the solver found wins in 49.0% and proved 8.5% lost.

Spider 4 suits: where people beat the machine

In Spider Solitaire 4 Suits, with 104 cards and four suits, the solver didn't solve a single deal within its budget. The number of possible positions is simply too large to search this way. Players have won 95.4% of the deals they tried. Here, experience and patience beat brute force.

Checked against real players

A proof is only as good as the program behind it, so we checked. Players on Solitaire Land had played 186 of the Russian Solitaire deals the solver proved lost, 94 of the Scorpion ones, 17 of the three-card Klondike ones and 18 of the Alaska ones. Not one of those deals has ever been won by anybody.

What this means when you play

Winnable deals, the Daily challenge and skill levels only use deals that are known to be winnable: won by players, or solved by the solver for games that are new.
The Hint now uses the solver: when it finds a way to win from your position, the hint shows the next move on that way.
When the solver proves there is no way to win from where you are, the game tells you, so you don't spend ten minutes going round in circles.
After a loss, Show me how to win plays the solver's solution of that deal, when it has one.

How we counted

Deals 1 to 200 of every game: the same deals anyone can play on the site.
The solver searched up to 150,000 positions per deal. In games where cards may go back from the foundations to the columns, it tries those moves too, so "proven lost" covers every legal move.
In four games (Spider 1 and 4 suits, Yukon and Scorpion 1 suit) the solver skips some moves to search faster, so it never calls a deal lost there.
Every solution was played back by the game's own rules before it counted.
The players' figures come from random deals played at least five times on Solitaire Land, as of 15 October 2026.

In short

Russian Solitaire: 93.0% of the deals are proven lost. Losing is normal.
Scorpion: at most 42.5% of the deals can be won. A lost game is often the deal's fault.
Alaska: the biggest gap between what is possible (73.0%) and what players manage (40.1%).
FreeCell and Spider 1 suit: almost every deal can be won.
Klondike and Spider 4 suits: hard for a computer to search, but most deals can be won, and players prove it every day.

Next time you lose, ask the game. If the hint says there is no way to win from here, it wasn't you.