The Most Popular Solitaire Card Games
Solitaire (also known as Patience) is one of the most popular card games ever invented. The popularity of Solitaire began to grow after Microsoft turned it into a household favourite by making it digitally accessible to millions of people across the globe. It can be played with a regular pack of playing cards or one of the online card game sites. There are currently hundreds of variations of the Solitaire game, with the most popular being:
Classic Solitaire (also known as Klondike Solitaire)
Classic Solitaire is the version of Solitaire most people know and love. It is a firm favourite amongst office workers and admin staff all over the planet. The game uses one deck of cards and is extremely easy once you get the hang of it.
You begin the game with seven columns in the tableau area and move cards to the top four piles, one for each suit, starting with the Ace and ending with the King. You can move face up cards in the columns around by placing them on top of each other if they are of an alternate colour and one less in value. You can draw a new card when you know longer have any moves to make. There are two versions of Classic Solitaire, the easy turn-1 version where only one card is turned over per draw and the relatively more difficult turn-3 version, where three cards are turned over per draw.
Solitairered is one of the most popular online solitaire sites.
Spider Solitaire
Spider Solitaire is a close second behind Classic Solitaire in terms of popularity. It gets its name because your objective is to create eight sequences of the same suit, which is the same number of legs a spider has. Sequences begin with a King and end with an Ace. There are two decks of cards used in this version of Solitaire.
There are three variations of Spider Solitaire; 1-suit, 2-suits and 4-suits which get increasingly difficult. The games start off with ten columns. Face up cards can be placed on top of each other if they are of a value of one less and are the same suit or alternate colour (for two suits and above). You can only move around sequences of the same suit. When you run out of moves, you can draw a new deal of ten cards. There are only five deals total. Deals can only be drawn if there is a card present in each column.
You can read a fun article on Spider Solitaire published on our sister site, Gifts for Card Players, here.
Pyramid Solitaire
Pyramid Solitaire starts with cards laid out to resemble a pyramid, with one card in the top row and seven cards on the bottom row. The objective of the game is to create pairs of cards that add up to 13. The value of King is 13 and can automatically be moved to the “pairs” pile, whilst the Queen, Jack and Ace are valued at 12, 11, and 1 respectively. The aim of the game is to have no cards left at the end.
FreeCell Solitaire
In FreeCell Solitaire, you can store cards strategically in four “free cells” throughout the game. Free cells are found at the upper left of the game and can only hold one card each. The objective of the game is to create four piles of cards in the upper left cells, one for each suit, starting with the Ace and ending with the King. The number of cards you can move around in a sequence is equal to one plus the number of empty free cells. You can read a fun article on Free Cell published on our sister site here.
Whilst there are many more solitaire card games out there, we have focused on the four most popular versions that are played by solitaire fans all over the world today.
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