Easthaven Klondike Solitaire

Easthaven Klondike is the answer to a simple question: what if Klondike dealt its cards to the tableau instead of a waste pile?

In standard Klondike, you draw cards one or three at a time into a waste pile. In Easthaven Klondike, there is no waste pile. Instead, each deal drops one new card face-up on all seven tableau columns at once. You get three more cards on the board every time you're stuck. That changes everything.

The game starts identically to Klondike. Seven tableau columns hold one through seven cards respectively, with only the top card face-up. The remaining 31 cards sit in the stock. You build down in alternating colors and push Aces to the foundations whenever they appear.

The divergence hits when you run out of moves. Instead of flipping through a waste pile, you hit Deal. Three cards land — one per column. Now every column has a new top card, some useful, some not. You play what you can, then deal again.

This mechanism makes Easthaven Klondike feel more like a puzzle than a draw game. You can see the tableau at all times. Nothing is hidden in a stock you're cycling through. When a deal buries a card you needed, you know it. When a deal opens a run you've been waiting for, you feel it immediately.

Empty columns follow Klondike's rule: only a King or a King-led sequence may fill one. That constraint keeps empty columns rare and valuable. You'll spend most of the game working toward them, then protecting them.

Win rate sits around 30-40% depending on the deal. That's meaningfully harder than standard Klondike's 82%, but far more approachable than two-deck games. The extra difficulty comes from lack of control — you cannot choose which card to play from a waste pile. The deal decides, and you adapt.

If you've mastered Klondike and want a challenge that keeps the same card count and building rules, Easthaven Klondike is the natural next step.

Setup: Shuffle a standard 52-card deck. Deal seven tableau columns: column one gets one card face-up, column two gets two cards with only the top face-up, and so on through column seven, which gets seven cards with only the top face-up. The remaining 31 cards form the stock, placed face-down. Place four empty foundation piles above the tableau.

How to differs from Klondike at a glance:

| Feature | Klondike | Easthaven Klondike | |---|---|---| | Stock deals to | Waste pile (1 or 3 cards) | Tableau directly (1 per column) | | Cards dealt per turn | 1 or 3 | 7 (one per column) | | Waste pile | Yes | No | | Empty column rule | Kings only | Kings only | | Win rate | ~82% | ~30-40% |

On each turn, you may do one or more of the following:

1. Move tableau cards. Move a face-up card or valid sequence onto another column. The bottom card of the moved sequence must be one rank lower and the opposite color of the card it lands on. A red 7 goes on a black 8. A sequence like black 6 — red 5 moves as a unit if it lands on a red 7 or higher.
2. Play to a foundation. Move any Ace to an empty foundation pile. Then add cards of the same suit in ascending order — 2, 3, 4, and so on up to King.
3. Flip a face-down card. When a face-down card becomes the top of a column, turn it face-up immediately.
4. Fill an empty column. Only a King or a sequence with a King at the bottom may fill an empty column.
5. Deal from the stock. When you have no useful moves, deal one card face-up from the stock onto each of the seven tableau columns. You must deal to all seven columns at once — you cannot deal to fewer. There is no redeal. The stock holds exactly enough cards for three full deal rounds (31 cards ÷ 7 columns = 4 deals, with 3 cards left for a partial final deal).

The game is won when all 52 cards are on the four foundations, Ace through King by suit. If the stock is exhausted and no moves remain, the game is lost.

• Plan before dealing. A deal drops one card on every column. Think about which columns have face-down cards near the surface, which are close to creating useful sequences, and where a bad card would do the most damage. Dealing at the wrong moment can bury a card you needed.
• Uncover face-down cards aggressively. Every buried card is a move you cannot make. Prioritize the columns with the most face-down cards. The sooner you flip them, the more options you have before the next deal arrives.
• Protect empty columns. An empty column is your most powerful tool. Do not fill it without a clear plan. Use it to break apart a blocked sequence, uncover a buried Ace, or park a King that enables a chain of productive moves.
• Watch which cards are coming. Unlike waste-pile Klondike, you cannot see the stock order. But you can see what is missing from the tableau. If red 4 is buried, you need to free it — not wait for a deal to fix the problem.
• Keep foundations balanced. Sending one suit far ahead can leave mid-rank cards stranded. You cannot move a red 5 from the tableau to the foundation if you've already cleared red 4 and the foundation only needs red 6. Balanced builds give you more tableau flexibility throughout the game.
• Save Aces when a deal is close. If an Ace appears and you have a nearly-full stock, getting it to the foundation quickly matters. Aces stuck under dealt cards become bottlenecks.

Easthaven Klondike belongs to a family of tableau-deal variants that emerged as solitaire software collections expanded in the 1990s and early 2000s. The core idea — dealing to the tableau rather than a waste pile — appears in several named and unnamed variants across digital solitaire libraries of that era.

The Klondike family has always been fertile ground for mechanical experimentation. Standard Klondike's waste-pile draw was tweaked into draw-one vs draw-three variants, then into games like Yukon (where all stock cards are immediately dealt face-up to the tableau) and Double Klondike (two decks, nine columns). Easthaven Klondike sits in the same lineage — a version of Klondike modified to deal its remaining cards onto the board rather than cycle them through a separate pile.

The name connects loosely to the "Easthaven" family of tableau-deal solitaires. Standard Easthaven uses three-card starting columns in a Spider-like configuration. Easthaven Klondike preserves Klondike's classic setup — seven columns of increasing depth — but adopts the tableau-dealing mechanism. The result is a variant that feels native to the Klondike family while playing quite differently from the original.

It appears in comprehensive solitaire software packages and has maintained a consistent audience among intermediate players who find Klondike too approachable but prefer single-deck games over the complexity of Spider or Forty Thieves.