How to Play Canfield Solitaire

Canfield is one of the most celebrated solitaire card games in history, named after Richard A. Canfield, a famous 19th-century casino owner who offered it as a gambling game in his Saratoga Springs resort. Players paid $52 for a deck and earned $5 back for every card placed on a foundation, making it one of the first commercially offered solitaire variants. The game uses a single standard 52-card deck and features a distinctive 13-card reserve pile that makes it both challenging and strategic. It ranks among the hardest solitaires in common play: in Jan Wolter's study of 50,000 three-card-draw deals, a computer solver won 71 percent, and players, who cannot search every line of play, win much less often. The one-card-draw version plays far easier.

Initial Setup

Setting up Canfield involves three distinct areas. Understanding each one is essential before you begin playing.

1. The Reserve: Deal 13 cards into a single face-down pile, then turn the top card face-up. Only the top card of the reserve is visible or playable at any time.
2. The Foundation Starter: Deal one card face-up to the first foundation position. This card's rank becomes the starting rank for all four foundation piles. For instance, if you deal a 7 of Hearts, every foundation must begin with a 7.
3. The Tableau: Deal one card face-up to each of four separate columns, placed to the right of the reserve. These four single-card columns form your initial tableau.
4. The Stock: The remaining 34 cards form the stock pile, kept face-down and dealt from during play.

Foundation Building

The four foundations are the ultimate destination for every card. Each foundation is built up in suit, starting from the rank of the foundation starter card. When building reaches a King, it wraps around through Ace and continues upward. For example, if the foundation starter is a Jack of Spades, that foundation's sequence would be: J-Q-K-A-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10, all in Spades.

The remaining three foundations begin when cards of the same rank as the starter appear during play. You cannot place any other rank as a foundation base. Each completed foundation will contain exactly 13 cards.

Tableau Building

Tableau columns are built downward by alternating color. A black 9 can be placed on a red 10, a red Queen on a black King, and so on. Like the foundations, tableau sequences wrap — an Ace can be placed on a 2 of the opposite color, and a King can be placed on an Ace of the opposite color.

Any properly-sequenced run may move from one tableau column to another, and you can take part of a run instead of all of it. From a column showing 10 of hearts, 9 of spades, 8 of diamonds you may move the 8 on its own, the 9 and 8 together, or all three. Splitting a run like that is the main tool for rearranging the tableau and uncovering buried cards.

Stock and Waste Pile

Cards are dealt from the stock three at a time to a face-up waste pile. Only the top card of the waste pile is available for play. Some other implementations offer a draw-one mode, which gives access to every card in sequence rather than every third card. Ours does not: every deal here is draw three.

When the stock is exhausted, pick up the waste pile, turn it face-down without shuffling, and it becomes the new stock. You may cycle through the stock as many times as needed. There is no limit on the number of passes through the stock in standard Canfield rules.

Using the Reserve

The top card of the reserve is always available for play — you can move it to a foundation or to a tableau column at any time. When the top card is played, turn the next card in the reserve face-up.

Once the reserve is emptied, it is not refilled. Depleting the reserve is a significant achievement and greatly improves your chances of winning. Whenever a tableau column becomes empty, it is filled from the reserve automatically. Only after the reserve is exhausted may you choose what goes into an empty column, and then any available card or run can take it.

Winning the Game

The game is won when all 52 cards have been moved to the four foundations, each containing a complete 13-card run in suit. A deal is dead once a full cycle of the stock produces no new legal move. Because the stock can always be recycled, our game never calls that loss for you, so judging when a deal is finished is your call. Because Canfield is a difficult game with a relatively low win rate, even experienced players consider getting most of the reserve onto the foundations a respectable outcome.

Canfield vs Klondike

Canfield and Klondike share the tableau-and-foundations shape, but three rules pull them apart. Canfield deals a 13-card reserve that Klondike has no match for, starts the foundations on a random rank instead of Aces, and wraps both the tableau and the foundations past King to Ace. Klondike gives you seven columns and lets only a King fill an empty one; Canfield gives you four columns and refills empties from the reserve. Those changes leave fewer deals winnable. With three cards per turn and unlimited passes, Charlie Blake and Ian Gent's solver found 81.5 percent of Klondike deals winnable, with no card taken back off a foundation; Jan Wolter's solver won 71 percent of Canfield deals under the same draw. The main Canfield page has the full side-by-side table.

Canfield Variants

Most Canfield variants change a single rule. Double Canfield uses two decks, eight foundations, and five tableau columns. Rainbow lets the tableau build down regardless of suit. Storehouse, also called Thirteen Up, fixes the base at the 2s and builds the tableau down by suit. Superior Canfield spreads the whole reserve face up and lets you fill empty columns by hand. Selective Canfield deals five cards and lets you choose the base rank.

The biggest difficulty switch is the stock draw: three at a time is the standard hard game, while one at a time is much kinder.

Quick Reference