Canfield Solitaire Strategy: 9 Tips to Win More Often

Let’s be honest from the start: Canfield is a hard game, and no amount of skill will win most deals. Thirteen cards are locked in the reserve, you can’t see twelve of them, and if the wrong cards are at the bottom, the game was over before you made a move. But skill still counts for a lot. A careless player wins almost never. A careful one wins several times as often and gets far more cards onto the foundations in the games that don’t come out. These tips are written for the traditional rules in our Canfield Solitaire game: Draw 3, whole columns only.

1. The Reserve Comes First

Nearly every lost game of Canfield ends the same way: cards still sitting in the reserve. So make this your rule. When the reserve card can be played, play it, and when two cards could make the same move, use the one from the reserve.

Say a black 9 is open in a column, and both the reserve and the waste pile show a red 8. Take the reserve’s 8. The waste card will come around again on the next pass. The reserve card is the one holding up twelve others.

2. Move Whole Columns to Pull Cards From the Reserve

An empty column is filled from the reserve at once. That makes every column you can empty worth one reserve card. Before you turn the deck, look across the four columns: does the first card of any column fit on the last card of another? If so, move it. The space fills from the reserve and you get a fresh card to work with, and often a new chain of moves.

Early in the game the columns are short, often a single card, so these moves are easy to find. Look for them every time the table changes.

3. Keep the Columns Easy to Join

Since a column moves only as a whole, what matters is its first card. A column that starts with a red Jack can only ever move onto a black Queen. If both black Queens are already covered or already on the foundations, that column is stuck where it is for good.

So when you have a choice of where to put a card, think about which columns you still hope to join. Try not to cover the one card that another column needs to land on. And when a column’s first card is the starting rank or close above it, remember that the cards it would sit on may soon be leaving for the foundations.

4. Know the Starting Rank Cold

Everything depends on the starting rank. If the piles start with 9s, then 9s, 10s and Jacks are your “low cards” that go up early, and 8s, 7s and 6s are the “high cards” that go up last. A 7 or an 8 in the columns will be there a long time, so it makes a fine base to build on. A 10 is likely to leave soon, and anything stacked on it has to move before it can go.

It takes a deal or two to get used to thinking this way. The empty foundation spaces in our game show the card each pile needs, which helps.

5. Don’t Bury a Card the Foundations Need Soon

In Canfield you can’t take part of a column, so a card in the middle of a column is locked until every card on top of it goes to the foundations, one at a time. Before you place a card on top of another, ask whether the card underneath is due on a foundation soon. If the spade pile is waiting for the Queen of spades, think twice before putting a red Jack on that Queen.

Sometimes you have to do it anyway to free a reserve card. That is usually the right trade. Just make it with your eyes open.

6. In Draw 3, Use the Order of the Deck

With three cards turned at a time, you only see every third card on a pass. The cards in between stay hidden until something changes. The thing that changes it is playing a card from the waste. Take one card out, and every group of three after it shifts by one. Take two, and it shifts again.

Good to know: with unlimited redeals, turning the deck costs you nothing. When you aren’t sure a move from the columns is wise, it’s fine to go around the deck again first and see what comes up.

7. Don’t Be in a Hurry to Send Every Card Up

Cards on the foundations can’t come back. Most of the time putting a card up is right, especially a card of the starting rank or one from the reserve. The exception is a card in the columns that something else still needs to land on. If a black 5 is the only place your reserve’s red 4 could ever go, leave the 5 where it is until the 4 has been played.

Our game’s auto-move only sends up cards that nothing could still need. If you like to make every choice yourself, you can turn it off in Settings.

8. Once the Reserve Is Empty, Guard Your Open Space

Emptying the reserve is the turning point. From then on, an empty column doesn’t fill by itself. You may put the top waste card into it, or leave it open. An open space is the most valuable thing on the table, so don’t drop the first card that comes along into it.

The best card for an open space is one that lets you keep building: a card that other waste cards or whole columns can be placed on right away, or one that uncovers a card you need in the deck. A card of the rank just below the starting rank is a good choice too, since it will be the last to go up and gives you a long run to build down from.

9. Use Undo and Hint Freely

Undo has no limit in our game, and there’s no penalty for using it. Canfield has a lot of “which one first?” moments, and the only way to learn is to try one, see what the reserve turns up, and back up if the other way looks better. If you can’t find a move, press Hint. It checks the reserve first, then the columns, then the deck, in about the same order this guide suggests.

Know When a Deal Is Lost

Some deals can’t be won. The usual sign is a full trip through the deck with nothing to play, while the reserve card sits there needing a card that is underneath it in the same pile. When Hint tells you no useful moves are left, it has looked through the whole deck. Don’t take it personally. Count the cards you got up top, and deal again.

If you’d like to win more often while you learn, try Draw 1 or Move part of a column in Settings. And when you want a game where careful play is rewarded nearly every time, FreeCell is a good change of pace. For the full rules of this game, see how to play Canfield Solitaire.

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