Yukon Solitaire

TSBy The Strategy Desk·Published March 27, 2026

Yukon Solitaire is a challenging variant of Klondike where all 52 cards are dealt face-up across seven tableau columns — no stock pile, no waste pile. The twist: we can move any face-up card along with all cards on top of it, regardless of whether they form a proper sequence.

How It Works

Column 1 gets one face-up card. Columns 2 through 7 each get one additional face-down card plus five face-up cards stacked on top. This means column 7 has 11 cards total (6 face-down + 5 face-up). All 52 cards are in play from the very first move.

Build on tableau columns in descending rank with alternating colors, just like Klondike. Build foundation piles up from Ace to King by suit. Only Kings can fill empty columns. The freedom to move any face-up card — not just ordered runs — gives you far more options but demands deeper strategic thinking.

Tips for Winning

• Focus on uncovering face-down cards — every reveal opens new possibilities
• Move Kings to empty columns strategically to unlock buried cards
• Don’t just move cards because you can — plan several moves ahead
• Build foundations steadily but don’t rush Aces up if they’re needed for tableau building
• Use the “move any face-up card” rule to dig deep into columns

History & Origins

Yukon takes its name from the same Gold Rush territory that inspired Klondike, and the two games are often treated as siblings in patience catalogs from the early twentieth century. The oldest printed descriptions place Yukon among the prospector-era variants that spread through North American parlors alongside Klondike itself, borrowing the seven-column deal and the ace-to-king foundations while quietly rewriting the movement rules. Where Klondike locks the tableau into strict descending runs and forces us to mine through a stock, Yukon turns every exposed card into a legal pick-up — the stack below a card tags along whether or not it is properly ordered. The result is a game that looks identical on the table but plays like a different sport once the first move is made, which is probably why it survived long enough to appear in most modern solitaire collections under both the Yukon and “Moosehide” names.

Strategic Principles

The single most important idea in Yukon is that every face-up card is movable. Unlike Klondike, where a buried nine can only travel if the cards above it already form a valid run, Yukon lets us grab that nine and everything piled on top of it in a single motion. We should exploit this constantly — the game rewards aggressive digging far more than patient building.

Empty columns are less valuable here than in Klondike. In Klondike, an empty column is a renewable staging area because any King and its attached run can refill it. In Yukon, since any card’s tail can always move anywhere, we do not need to hoard empty columns as a transit lane. Clearing a column just to have it empty is almost always a mistake; we should only do it when a specific sequence of moves requires the space.

Build down in alternating colors whenever the option exists, and prioritize sequences that give us access to face-down cards. Every face-down card we expose expands our future move tree, and the deepest columns (columns six and seven, with their stacks of six and eleven cards) hide the information we need most. When in doubt, we ask: does this move reveal a hidden card, or does it only shuffle visible cards around? If the answer is the second, we pause and look for something better. Finally, do not break up same-suit sequences needlessly — while alternating-color builds are the official tableau rule, keeping matching suits grouped makes eventual foundation transfers cleaner and prevents the tableau from fossilizing into an unmovable knot.

Difficulty & Win Rate

Yukon is one of the most solvable cascade games in the family. Because all 52 cards are face-up by the end of the deal and every card is movable, solver studies consistently place the theoretical win rate near 85% — an enormous number for a game that looks this intimidating. The open information is the reason: with no hidden stock and no randomness after the deal, a careful player has access to the full decision tree from move one.

Human win rates are naturally lower, typically landing in the 25–45% band depending on experience. The gap between the theoretical ceiling and the practical average tells us something important: Yukon losses are almost always strategic, not unlucky. Unlike Klondike, where a bad stock shuffle can doom a deal, Yukon punishes impatience and rewards thinking three or four moves ahead. Use undo liberally while learning; the solver confirms that most deals are winnable, so a loss is usually a signal to replay and hunt for the line we missed.

Common Mistakes

• Treating empty columns like Klondike.New Yukon players often spend three or four moves clearing a column out of habit, then find they had nothing planned to put there. Keep the column full until a specific King-plus-run move needs the room.
• Breaking same-suit sequences.Splitting a neatly matching run just to satisfy the alternating-color tableau rule creates extra work for the endgame, when we need to feed the foundations in clean suited order.
• Rushing low cards to foundation.Aces and twos are often more useful as tableau anchors than as foundation base cards. Park them until the board opens up.
• Ignoring column 7.The deepest column hides the most information. Plan digs that target it early rather than saving it for last.

How This Game Compares

Yukon vs. Klondike. The deal structure is identical — seven columns, a staircase of face-down cards topped with a face-up anchor — but the play experience diverges instantly. Klondike forces us through a stock pile and restricts tableau moves to ordered runs, so a big part of the game is simply managing draw timing. Yukon removes the stock entirely and lets any face-up card migrate with its tail. Win rates reflect the difference: Klondike hovers around 80% solvable with variable human rates, while Yukon’s open tableau pushes the solver number to roughly 85% and makes skilled play noticeably more rewarding.

Yukon vs. FreeCell.Both are open-information games — no hidden stock, no random draws after the deal. FreeCell is famously near-perfectly solvable (99.999%+), while Yukon’s ~85% is lower because we lack free cells as temporary storage. Players who love FreeCell’s deductive feel will enjoy Yukon; players who want more forgiving odds should stick with FreeCell.

Yukon vs. Spider.Spider uses two decks and same-suit grouping rules, which makes it a fundamentally different puzzle — closer to sequencing than cascade digging. Yukon is the tighter, single-deck cousin.

Variant Notes

Yukon has spawned a small family of variants worth knowing. The most popular is Russian Solitaire, which keeps Yukon’s move-any-card rule but rejects the alternating-color tableau rule in favor of strict same-suit descending builds. The result is punishingly hard — solver estimates drop into the 20–30% range because same-suit constraints strangle the decision tree. Alaska (sometimes called Alaska Yukon) splits the difference by allowing both up-and-down same-suit runs on the tableau, which changes the strategic texture considerably and opens lines that are impossible in pure Yukon. Double Yukon scales the game up to two decks and nine columns, attractive for players who want longer sessions and a broader decision space without leaving the Yukon rule set. For a lighter change of pace, try the Moosehide rewording of the standard rules, which is identical in play but appears under a different name in older catalogs.

Learn More

• How to Play Yukon Solitaire — Complete rules, setup, and strategy guide
• Yukon Strategy Guide — Tips and winning tactics
• Play Klondike Solitaire — The classic solitaire game Yukon is based on
• Play Spider Solitaire — Another challenging multi-column solitaire game
• Types of Solitaire — Explore 20+ solitaire variants