Canfield Solitaire

TSBy The Strategy Desk·Published March 27, 2026

Canfield Solitaire (also called Demon Patience in the UK) is one of the most challenging and storied solitaire card games. Originally played in the casinos of Richard A. Canfield in the 1890s, players would pay $52 to play and earn $5 for each card placed on the foundations — the house almost always won.

How It Works

Thirteen cards are dealt face-down to the reserve pile with only the top card face-up. One card is placed on the first foundation, establishing the base rank for all four foundations. Four tableau columns receive one card each. The remaining cards form the stock pile, which deals three cards at a time to the waste pile.

Build foundations up in suit, wrapping from King through Ace back to the rank below the base. Build tableau columns down in alternating colors, also with wrapping. When a tableau column empties, it automatically fills from the reserve. When the stock is exhausted, flip the waste pile back over to form a new stock (unlimited redeals).

Tips for Winning

• Empty tableau columns are auto-filled from the reserve — use this to reveal hidden reserve cards
• Focus on depleting the reserve pile early for more flexibility
• Pay attention to the base rank — plan your foundation builds accordingly
• Don’t rush to move cards to foundations if they’re useful for tableau building
• Use the unlimited redeal wisely — track which cards cycle through the waste

Frequently Asked Questions

History & Origins

Canfield takes its name from Richard A. Canfield, a notorious gambling impresario who ran the Canfield Casino in Saratoga Springs, New York in the late 1800s. According to the enduring story, Canfield sold players a full $52 deck for fifty-two dollars and then paid them five dollars for every card they managed to move to the foundations — a game so punishingly hard that the house pocketed the difference on nearly every hand. The mathematics of the deal mean the average player loses around twenty-five to thirty dollars per session, which is why Canfield the man became wealthy and Canfield the game became famous. In the United Kingdom the same rules circulated under the name Demon or Demon Patience, and those names survive in British patience manuals today. The game stuck around because the rules are simple, the decisions are genuinely interesting, and the casino pedigree gives every deal a faint whiff of danger.

Strategic Principles

The first strategic idea in Canfield is that the reserve pile of 13 cards is the entire game. We cannot win a Canfield deal without clearing most of that reserve, and since only the top card is face-up at any moment, every reserve move is a small act of discovery. Plan to play the reserve down systematically — every time a tableau column empties, it auto-fills from the top of the reserve, so we should engineer tableau clears precisely to keep the reserve moving.

The second strategic idea is that the foundation base rank is variable. In Canfield, the fourteenth card we see (the first foundation card dealt) sets the base for all four foundations. If that card is a seven, all four foundations climb 7-8-9-10-J-Q-K-A-2-3-4-5-6 with wraparound. This matters because it changes which cards are “low” and which are “high” for the duration of the deal. A two is usually a friendly foundation climber; in a base-seven game, it is one of the last cards we can play up. Track the base rank and plan foundation moves around it, not around the natural ace-through-king habit.

The third idea is stock cycling discipline. Canfield deals three cards at a time from the stock to the waste pile, with unlimited redeals, but the cycle is not free — each pass shows us the same subset of cards in the same order, and we only have access to the top of each triplet. Track which cards you have seen, and commit to playing them when the tableau supports it. If a card cycles through three times without a home, it is a signal that we need to change the tableau structure, not keep waiting. Finally, build tableau columns down in alternating colors with wrapping, but do not over-invest in long tableau runs — reserve clearing is almost always more valuable than tableau building.

Difficulty & Win Rate

Canfield is middle-of-the-pack in difficulty. The commonly cited number is that roughly 35% of Canfield deals are winnable with careful play — a figure that places it above Forty Thieves (around 10–20%) and below Klondike (roughly 80% solvable). Casual player win rates typically sit in the 5–15% band, mostly because the hidden reserve pile punishes players who fail to track what has been revealed. The unlimited stock redeals give us more chances to recover than Forty Thieves offers, but the variable base rank and the 13-card reserve create genuine strategic tension that Klondike lacks. Players who enjoy Canfield usually describe it as a game of information management: win rates climb noticeably once we internalize the stock cycle and reserve tracking.

Common Mistakes

• Neglecting the reserve.The reserve pile is the game. Players who treat it as a side stack and focus on tableau and stock will lose most deals.
• Blocking foundations.Because foundations wrap from the base rank, it is easy to lock a card under a useless build. Always check foundation availability before committing a tableau sequence.
• Miscounting stock cycles.We see the same cards in the same order every pass, minus the ones we played. Losing track of that cycle turns the stock into noise instead of information.
• Over-building the tableau.A long tableau run looks productive but does not clear the reserve. When in doubt, do the reserve move first.

How This Game Compares

Canfield vs. Klondike. On paper the games look similar — both feature a stock, a waste, tableau columns built down in alternating colors, and foundations that climb by suit. The differences are decisive. Klondike fixes the foundation base at ace and has no reserve pile, which makes it a cleaner cascading game. Canfield’s 13-card reserve plus variable base rank create a very different puzzle: we are not just sequencing cards, we are managing a hidden information pile while navigating foundations that do not start at ace. Klondike is the better introduction; Canfield is the better long-term practice.

Canfield vs. FreeCell.FreeCell is an open-information game with near-perfect solvability. Canfield is the opposite — hidden reserve cards, cycled stock triplets, and variable base ranks create information asymmetry that FreeCell players find genuinely foreign. Neither is harder than the other in a pure solver sense; they are hard in different ways.

Canfield vs. Yukon.Both offer richer tableau mechanics than Klondike, but they diverge sharply. Yukon has no stock or reserve at all; Canfield leans on both. Yukon rewards aggressive digging; Canfield rewards patience and information tracking.

Variant Notes

The Canfield family includes several named variants worth knowing. Rainbow Canfield loosens the alternating-color rule and lets us build tableau columns in any color sequence, which noticeably raises the win rate and is a common easy-mode entry point. Storehouse Canfield (sometimes called Thirteen Up or Provisions) fixes all four foundations to start at ace, which removes the variable base rank and turns the game into a more conventional ace-to-king climb. Demon is simply the British name for standard Canfield and plays identically. Some digital collections include a Double Canfieldtwo-deck version for longer sessions. Each variant keeps the 13-card reserve as its strategic anchor; only the surrounding rules change.

Learn More

• How to Play Canfield Solitaire — Complete rules, setup, and strategy guide
• Play Klondike Solitaire — The classic draw-and-stack solitaire
• Play Golf Solitaire — Fast-paced solitaire with streak scoring
• Types of Solitaire — Explore 20+ solitaire variants