Card games for one player are called Patience in Britain and Solitaire in America. The web site gambiter.com is devoted mostly to games for more than one player, but on this page I have provided some links to sites which specialise in one-player games. Some of these sites contain rules or analysis, and many of them provide software, since these solitary games are particularly suitable for play against a computer. If you have further links or information that should be included on this page, please let us know.
This page deals with solitaire (patience) games played with playing-cards. There are separate pages for:
Here is a link to an article by David Parlett on the Origins and History of Patience / Solitaire.
Randy Rasa's Solitaire Central site contains a wide range of information, including a searchable Solitaire Rulebook with descriptions of numerous games, a searchable collection of reviews of computer solitaire games for download, plus reviews of online solitaire games.
Here is an archive copy of Gordon Bower's Solitaire pages, which have rules of several solitaires, old and new, and investigations of the probability of winning.
For information about Freecell, see Michael Keller's Freecell site, including a tutorial, a catalog of solutions and free computer program Freecell Pro. A further collection of Freecell links can be found at Freecell.org.
Michael Keller also runs the Solitaire Laboratory, which includes a section on Giza.
The rules section of the BVS Solitaire site has rules for hundreds of solitaire games.
Boris Sandberg's BVS Solitaire is a collection of 487 different solitaire games for Windows: a free trial version is available. He has also published BVS Solitaire for Mac OS X. The software allows the user to create new games by modifying the rules of the included games. The author writes: "You'll be able to learn solitaires not found elsewhere. BVS Solitaire Collection gives you a plethora of statistical and scoring screens. You can track your performance and progress in playing solitaire about as completely as many people use a computer to track their finances. And you can publish your personal statistics on the BVS Solitaire Collection web site to appear in the top scores list."
BVS also runs sites giving rules and strategy tips for Freecell and Spider, with free trial downloads of these games.
Here is an archive copy of Single Player Card Games from the Card Game Heaven site, which had rules of several Solitaire games.
Thomas Warfield's Pretty Good Solitaire is a collection of 770 solitaire games for Windows. Users can have their win/loss statistics posted on the web site. The site also contains the rules for all these games. From the same site you can also obtain Action Solitaire, in which you play for points against the clock in timed rounds, and Pretty Good Mahjongg, a collection of solitaire games using Mah Jong and other tile sets, including the well-known tile matching game, and also Mah Jong tile solitaires based on Freecell, Spider and Klondike.
SolSuite 2012 by TreeCardGames Inc. is a high quality Windows shareware collection of 537 different Solitaire games including Klondike, FreeCell, Spider, Pyramid, Golf, Busy Aces, Canfield, Forty Thieves, Diplomat, Four Seasons, Poker Solitaire, Flower Garden, Rouge et Noir, Scorpion, Monte Carlo, Sultan, La Belle Lucie, Gaps and several original games. Features include unlimited undo and redo, Snapshot position and Undo to snapshot, comprehensive statistics, customisable playing-cards and backgrounds, and an editor that lets you change the rules of any game.
HOYLE Card Games for Windows or Mac OS X includes a collection of solitaire games, which are also available as a separate package.
Microsoft's Solitaire, a computer version of Klondike Solitaire created by Wes Cherry, was included with every version of Windows from 3.0 to 7. For later versions of Windows the Microsoft Solitaire Collection is available as a free download.
Aisleriot Solitaire is a free collection of over 80 solitaire games programmed in the GNOME scripting language and available for Linux, Windows and Hildon platforms. A manual is available that lists and describes the games.
Zonora Technologies offers several shareware collections of solitaire games with comprehensive statistics and save, undo and replay facilities.
SolitaireOnline.com is an English language edition of the Dutch site PatienceSpelen.nl with around 40 free games that can be played online in your browser; a German edition is also available at KartenSpielen.de. The Freecell game on these sites has a mechanism and game numbers consistent with the Microsoft Windows version.
1st Free Solitaire for Windows 95/98/Me/2000/XP/2003 is a free "lite" version of Boris Sandberg's BVS Solitaire, consisting of 7 popular solitaire card games: Yukon, FreeCell, Klondike, Flower Garden, Nestor, Bisley, Carpet.
James Yates has written pages on Solitaire Strategy and Vegas-style Scoring, which discuss the strategy of Klondike Solitaire.
WebTV users: the following sites provide Solitaire games that can be played on-line - no downloads and no Java required!
Here are the rules for Cribbage Solitaire, in which you play Cribbage against the deck.
You can play Solitaire at GameDuell. - they offer a range of Solitaire games that can be played for fun or for money.
At World Winner players can compete in tournaments for cash prizes at Freecell, Solitaire Rush, Golf Solitaire, Catch 21 and other games.
|
Tournament Games - Online Tournament Solitaire and more with cash prizes to tournament winners! Play free or pay to play! $10.00 free credits to new players! Players download the free software and compete online. A range of games is offered, including:
|
Rick Holzgrafe's Semicolon Software publishes Solitaire Till Dawn, a collection of solitaire computer programs for the Macintosh, plus a discussion of the strategy for winning the various games:
Scott McNab's Card Games 4 Free site reviews a range of free Solitaire games.
Hardwood Solitaire IV is a collection of over 80 3D solitaires which can be played online (in a web browser), and is available for iOS (iphone, ipod, ipad) Android, Kindle, Xbox, Windows and Mac.
AS-Solitaire is a free collection of 40 Solitaire games for Windows, supplied with an editor which you can use to design your own cards for the game.
You can download Miha's Windows shareware collection 18 card games for 1 player which includes Freecell, Four Seasons, Golf, Alternate, Canfield, Auld Lang Syne, Castles in Spain, Klondike, Ship shape and Bristol fashion, The Battle of Ladies, Son of fortune, The Beleaguered Castle, Bisley, Fortress, Grandpa's clock, Princ Albert, Quadrille and Raglan. The free version gives access to a limited selection of these - to play all 18 you need to register the package, which includes a facility for the user to add further games by specifying their rules in a text file.
John Punzak's EverydayGames.net has a collection of Java solitaire games which can be played in a web browser. They include Klondike, Spider, Scorpion, Pyramid, Canfield, Freecell and others.
Albert Henderson's Solitaire with Cards is a collection of free solitaires written in Javascript which can be played online in a web browser.
At the Solitaire Bliss site you can play Klondike, Spider, Freecell and Pyramid free online.
123 Free Solitaire is a freeware collection of solitaire games by TreeCardGames Inc. The same organisation also publishes several more free collections: 123 Free Solitaire for Children, NetSolitaire, and Spider Solitaire.
Dig Solitaire has a range of free online solitaire games.
From Funkitron you can buy a Solitaire Kingdom Supreme - a variation of Klondike Solitaire for Windows in which the pack contains various bonus cards and key cards which confer special powers when discovered. Also available for Mac and iPhone.
Solitr is a free open-source JavaScript-based Klondike game by Jo Liss.
DKM software offers an range of free online Solitaire games.
Game Colony offers Freecell, Solitaire and Rush-21 head to head games and multi-player tournaments, which can be played free or for cash prizes.
AOL games (formerly games.com) provides several free online Solitaire games.
The Dutch site SpelletjesOverzicht has a large collection of free online card games, most of which are solitaire games. There is a similar collection at games.co.za, with an interface in English.
Here is a link to David Bernazzani's free Solitude for Windows software.
The shareware Absolutist Solitaire Studio has a range of solitaire games and a Solitaire Script language which allows you to design your own games and add them to the program.
PySol is a free open source collection of solitaire games which can run on Unix, Windows and Macintosh computers.. The original project by Markus Oberhumer officially ended in 2004, but was continued and extended by the PySol Fan Club. The collection now includes more than 1000 solitaire games.
King Sol is a collection of over 400 solitaire games for Windows.
At Solitaire Paradise, you can play verious solitaire games including Tri-Peaks Reserve, a more skilful variation of the popular Tri-Towers solitaire game, the similar Golf Solitaire and also Tower Solitaire, a variation of Pyramid Solitaire in which one card can be placed in a temporary store, and Forty Thieves.
At Solitaire Mania you can play a number of free solitaire games online in your browser.
Amber Mango, a UK company based in York, offers Freecell3D, a 3D rendered version of Freecell with the emphasis on looks and features. The game features an animated solver and a the split-screen Race Mode where you compete against the computer to finish the same deal first.
Solitär Spielen has a selection of free online Solitaire games. Although the pages are in German, the game interfaces are in English.
A free online soltaire (Klondike) game is available on David Mahler's site.
At ArcadeGamePlace you can play Magic Room Solitaire (a variant of Spider solitaire in which suits are ignored) and Waikiki Solitaire (a simple game of matching pairs of cards).
The German site Skill 7 includes both Solitaire and multi-player games to play online.
Juggs is a solitaire game by Eric Maddocks, in which the aim is to arrange the whole 52-card deck in a single descernding sequence of alternating colours. Eiric has written a Juggs app for iOS.
North Star Solutions' Poker Challenge is a computer solitaire game for Windows in which the objective is to identify and remove high scoring poker hands from a playing-card layout.
Maurits van der Schee's AceCardGames site has twelve Flash solitaire games that can be played on line. (You will need to download the free Flash 7 player if you don't already have it).
Here are archive copies of Danny Kodicek's two Shockwave patience (solitaire) games: Ships and Layered.
Sema's on-line Teker game is another Poker / Tetris hybrid, now available in English. Pocket PC and Smartphone versions also available.
In Dream Solitaire, available to play online or download, ascending or chains of alternate red and black cards are removed from a grid layout, causing new cards to fall from the top.
The Skill Arcade site offers an on line game of Golf Solitaire.
DogMelon offers solitaire games for PC, Palm and eBookman.
Here are Rudy Muller's rules for Rangoon (also known as Station, Blue-Moon, Gaps, Montana Aces). The page also has details of his computer program for playing it.
The Italian site Solitari con le carte has rules and software for several games.
The American Federation for the Advancement of Duplicate Solitaire (AmFADS) has released Klondike Pro, a computer solitaire game based on Klondike, but with a special scoring system designed for competitive duplicate play.
Here is John Kanold's SolKan32 for Windows,which plays about 200 different Solitaire games including several not found in other packages.
The Softgame Company's Funsol Solitaire plays hundreds of solitaire games.
The Solitaire Network has a collection of 30 Java Soliatire games that are free to play on line without registration.
Mike's Cards is a shareware collection of solitaire games for Macintosh and Windows computers. A freeware version Mike's Cards Lite is also available from the same site.
Solitaire Forever offers a collection of over 100 solitaire games with 3D graphics for Macs running OS X 10.2 or higher; they will run on PowerPC or Intel Macs but no longer work with OS 9.
Spielhalle24.net has seversl free Solitaire games that can be played online in a browser.
Solitaire King has several free solitaire games that can be played online in a browser.
PCHgames has a collection of solitaire games: Freecell, Klondike, Pyramid, Spider and others, which can be played online.
Pete Wiseman's Solitaire City offers ten Solitaire games for Windows (45 if variations are counted). These are timed games against the clock - the faster you play, the higher you score. Versions of Solitaire City for Palm OS and Pocket PC are also available.
Mike Perry's Allgood Solitaire (formerly Poor man's Solitaire) for the Macintosh includes a range of games.
At playsolitaire-online.com you can play Klondike solitaire online in a browser.
Neon Games has some solitaire games that can be played online.
Timely Pick offers Klondike or Spider solitaire with pictures and messages related to your chosen topic on all the cards.
The Solitaire Bodies page has Klondike Solitaire games with pinup cards that can be played on line or downloaded.
Here is Brian Bain's Windows Solitaire program. Standard Solitaire but with a variety of card deck options and the possibility to design your own deck.
The Solitaire Now site offers a customisable shareware Freecell game and a collection of links to other shareware and freeware Solitaire games for various platforms.
Rain Forest is an online version of Tri-Peaks solitaire with a rain forest theme.
Spellarama Solitaire Mania is a computer solitaire game using letter cards to complete words of a given length.
Rules (in French) for La loi Salique and Pyramide are available from Jean-François Bustarret's site.
Tim Winter's Game Suite a collection of nine solitaire card games - not traditional solitaire games but games in which you race against a clock.
Here are Mike Lalena's Java Games: Eleven Out, Fun21, Poker Flash, Quick21 and others. Again, these are games played against the clock. Most of them were originally developed for the coin operated touch screen game systems usually found at bars.
Note - links to Video Poker games have been moved from here to the Video Poker page. Links to Tile Matching games are now on the Tile Matching page.