Yukon Solitaire Strategy: 10 Tips to Win More Games

Yukon gives you a lot of freedom. With no deck to wait on and almost every card open to being moved, a typical position offers a dozen legal moves, and most of them look reasonable. That freedom is exactly what makes the game tricky. The players who win often are not the ones who move fastest, but the ones who ask "what does this move uncover?" before every tap.

The Yukon Solitaire strategy tips below are simple habits. None of them needs counting or memorizing. Try them in our free Yukon Solitaire game, where Undo is unlimited and you can test an idea without any cost.

1. Turn Over Face-Down Cards Before Anything Else

Twenty-one cards start face down, and you cannot win without seeing every one of them. So the first question on every turn is: is there a move that turns a card over? If there is, it is almost always the best move on the table.

In Yukon a column's hidden cards are uncovered when its lowest face-up card moves away, taking everything above it along. That means one good move can uncover a card, where classic solitaire might need five. Look at the first face-up card in each column (the one resting directly on the face-down cards) and ask where it could go.

2. Work on the Tall Columns First

The right-hand columns hide the most cards: six in column 7, five in column 6. If you have a choice between turning a card in column 3 and turning one in column 7, choose column 7. The short columns will come open on their own later. The deep ones are where games are lost.

3. Find the Aces and Plan Around Them

Before your first move, find all the Aces you can see. An Ace that is the last card of a column is no trouble. An Ace with four cards on top of it blocks its whole suit until you clear it.

To free a buried Ace, you need to move the card sitting right on top of it. Work out what that card needs. If a red 9 is sitting on your Ace, you need a black 10 at the end of some column. Now you have a small, clear goal instead of a vague hope. The same goes for the 2s and 3s.

If an Ace is nowhere in sight, it is face down. That is one more reason to dig.

4. Read the Whole Column, Not Just the End

Players coming from classic solitaire tend to look only at the last card of each column. In Yukon that is half the picture. Every face-up card is a card you can pick up. When you need a red Jack for a black Queen, scan up and down every column. It may be three cards deep, and that is fine. It can still move.

A good routine: take the last card of each column in turn and ask, "which face-up card anywhere on the table fits on this?" With seven columns there are at most seven cards to check, and for each one only two cards in the deck fit.

5. Think About What Comes Along

When you move a card from the middle of a column, the cards on top of it come too, and they land on the new column. Sometimes that buries a card you were about to use. Before a group move, look at two things:

• What gets uncovered where the group came from. A face-down card? An Ace? A card you need?
• What gets covered where the group lands. The last card of the target column will now have a pile on it.

If a move uncovers something useful and covers nothing you need soon, make it. If it is the other way around, look for something better first.

6. Don't Shuffle Cards Back and Forth

A red 6 that already sits on a black 7 gains nothing by hopping to the other black 7, unless the card it leaves behind is one you need. Moves like that feel like progress but aren't. Each move should turn a card over, free a card for the foundations, open a space for a waiting King, or put a card onto one it fits when it was sitting on one it didn't.

7. Get Kings Into Place Early, and Choose Which King

Kings are the awkward cards. Nothing takes a King except an empty column, so a King in the middle of a column, with face-down cards under it, is a cork in a bottle. The first column holds just one card at the start, which makes it your first likely empty space.

When a space opens and you have more than one King to choose from, don't grab the first one you see. Ask which King's move turns over a face-down card, and which King has a Queen ready to follow it. A King whose opposite-color Queen is buried face down somewhere will sit alone for a long time.

8. Don't Empty a Column Without a King in Mind

An empty column is valuable only when a King can use it. Clearing the last card out of a column when every King you can see is already at the start of its own column leaves a hole that does nothing. Worse, you have one less column end to build on. If no King is waiting, it is often better to leave a card there.

9. Don't Always Rush Cards to the Foundations

Aces and 2s should go up at once. Nothing ever needs to sit on them. Higher cards deserve a second look. A black 6 on the table is a landing place for a red 5 and whatever is piled on it. Send that 6 up too early and the red 5 may have nowhere to go.

A simple test: a card is safe to send up when both cards of the other color that are one rank lower are already on the foundations. Our game's auto-move uses that test, so the cards it moves for you are never ones you will miss. For anything else, you decide.

10. Use Undo as a Thinking Tool

With so many possible moves, even careful players pick the wrong branch. In our game Undo is unlimited and costs nothing. When you face two promising moves, try one, play three or four moves ahead, and if it leads nowhere, undo back and try the other. You will learn more about Yukon from ten minutes of that than from any list of tips.

The Hint button looks for moves that turn a card over, free a card for the foundations or make a useful space, and tells you which it found. If it says no move makes progress, believe it: go back a few moves, or deal again. Not every deal can be won, and there is no shame in a fresh start.

A Quick Checklist for Every Turn

1. Can any card go to a foundation safely?
2. Is there a move that turns over a face-down card? Prefer the tallest column.
3. Is there a move that frees an Ace, a 2, or the next card a foundation needs?
4. Is there a King that could take an empty column and uncover something?
5. Only then: is there a move that tidies a column without covering a card I need?

If You Play Russian Solitaire

With the Russian Solitaire rule on, a card fits on just one other card in the whole deck: the next higher card of its own suit. Everything above still applies, with two changes. First, you can send any card to its foundation the moment it fits, because nothing will ever need to sit on it. Second, be very careful what you bury. With only one possible landing place for each card, covering that place can end the game.

With these habits you will see far more games through to the end. For a gentler game with the same look, try classic Klondike. If you enjoy planning with every card in view, FreeCell is all planning and almost no luck. And the Yukon rules page is there if you want to check a detail.