Seahaven Towers Solitaire

TSBy The Strategy Desk·Published April 5, 2026

Seahaven Towers is a strategic single-deck solitaire game that blends the free cell mechanics of FreeCell with the same-suit building of Baker's Game. With 10 columns, 4 free cells, and single-card moves only, it demands precise planning and careful use of temporary storage.

How Seahaven Towers Works

Deal 50 cards face-up across 10 columns of 5. The remaining 2 cards go to the first two of four free cells. Build four foundation piles from Ace to King, one per suit. Tableau stacking is same-suit descending — place a 9 of Hearts on a 10 of Hearts. Only single cards can be moved, and empty columns accept Kings only.

Why It's Special

Seahaven Towers sits at a unique intersection: it has the temporary storage of FreeCell but the strict same-suit requirement of Baker's Game. The single-card-only rule means you must manually orchestrate every step of a multi-card sequence transfer, making each free cell and empty column critically important. The 10-column layout gives you more room to maneuver than FreeCell's 8 columns, but 2 pre-occupied free cells tighten the opening.

History & Origins

Seahaven Towers was designed in 1991 by Art Cabral as a variant in the macOS classic solitaire compilation distributed with Solitaire Till Dawn. That origin makes it one of the youngest members of the FreeCell family, and also one of the most carefully engineered: Cabral intentionally tightened several FreeCell rules to land on a board that is more demanding without sliding into unfair territory. It shares the four free-cell layout of FreeCell and the same-suit building of Baker's Game, but layers on a signature constraint: only Kings can be placed on empty tableau columns. Two of the four cells also start pre-occupied by leftover deal cards. The combined effect is a FreeCell cousin that looks similar at a glance but plays with considerably less room to improvise.

Strategic Principles

The kings-only-on-empty rule is the constraint every Seahaven decision eventually bumps into. Empty columns are as precious as in any FreeCell-family game, but here they only help us if we have a King ready to occupy them. Planning King placement is therefore a first-move concern. We scan for each of the four Kings at the start, identify which columns hold them and how deeply they are buried, and decide in advance which two Kings we will prioritise surfacing. A deal with two Kings already near their column tops is an easier deal than one with all four buried.

Suit-matching foundations mean sequential extraction per suit. Like Baker's Game and Eight Off, we cannot park an off-suit card on a foundation for tempo. That forces each suit's Ace-through-King climb to happen in strict order, and a buried low card becomes a structural problem rather than a minor inconvenience. The ten-column layout (50 cards dealt, five per column) gives us more columns than FreeCell but shallower stacks, which helps surface low cards earlier. Our rule of thumb: identify the suit whose 2 through 5 are closest to column surfaces and build that suit first.

Because Seahaven only allows single-card moves (no supermoves), every multi-card shuffle costs time. We plan cell sequences carefully: if we need to move four cards off a column, we ask whether all four will find landing spots on the tableau after the move, or whether two will return to cells. If the answer is “return to cells,” the shuffle is probably not worth it. See our full FreeCell variants overview for how Seahaven compares to its siblings.

Difficulty & Win Rate

Seahaven Towers lands at roughly 70% solvable with expert play — harder than Eight Off, slightly easier than Baker's Game in practice (the extra tableau columns compensate for the kings-only rule), and well below standard FreeCell's near-perfect solve rate. The 70% ceiling comes from the combined constraints: same-suit foundations, kings-only empty columns, single-card moves, and two pre-occupied cells at deal time.

In practice, player win rates cluster lower. New Seahaven players typically land around 35 to 45%, climbing to the mid-60s after a week of focused play. The gap is almost entirely about King planning. Players who treat Kings as incidental lose deals they could win; players who pre-select target Kings in the first three moves close the gap with the 70% theoretical ceiling within a few dozen hands.

Common Mistakes

• Treating empty columns like FreeCell wildcards.An empty column you cannot fill with a King is dead space. Verify King access before you celebrate clearing a column.
• Spraying cells on non-essential cards. With two cells already occupied at deal time and no supermoves, the effective working capacity is just two. Park deliberately.
• Ignoring the two pre-occupied cells. Those starting cards are often key. We audit them in the first two moves and play whichever have immediate legal destinations.
• Building long tableau runs before suit planning.Constructing a beautiful 9-through-4 same-suit descent feels productive, but if the 2 and 3 of that suit are buried under a King stack elsewhere, the run is decorative.
• Moving single cards for aesthetics. Every move costs a click and sometimes a cell. If a move does not advance a suit or reveal a target card, defer it.

How This Game Compares

Against FreeCell, the critical rule changes are same-suit tableau building (instead of alternating colour), same-suit foundations, and the kings-only rule for empty columns. Seahaven also deals across ten columns rather than eight, and starts with two cells pre-occupied. Against Baker's Game, it shares same-suit building but adds the kings-only empty column rule and changes the column layout — Baker's Game uses FreeCell's 8-column deal. Against Eight Off, Seahaven provides fewer cells (four vs. eight) but gains extra tableau columns. Within FreeCell variants, Seahaven is the strictest widely-played cousin in this branch.

Variant Notes

Cabral's original specification is the canonical ruleset: four cells with two pre-occupied, ten columns of five, kings-only on empty columns, same-suit foundations, and single-card moves only. Some modern implementations offer a supermove shortcut (automating what would otherwise be a tedious multi-step single-card sequence); our default disables it to preserve the intended texture. A common house rule permits any card on empty columns, which lifts the solve rate closer to 90% but erases the game's signature constraint. No redeal is offered — Seahaven is a single-deal puzzle. For a much more forgiving FreeCell relative, see Easy FreeCell.

A few implementations number the cells left to right and auto-deal cards into specific positions; Cabral's original used the leftmost two cells for the two pre-occupied cards, a convention our version preserves. Players who enjoy Seahaven often graduate to it from Eight Off after running their win rate above 90% there. The reverse path — jumping from standard FreeCell straight into Seahaven — typically produces a frustrating first week because the habits that reward standard FreeCell (promiscuous cell use, colour-based tableau building) actively hurt Seahaven performance. We recommend the Eight Off intermediate step unless you already play Baker's Game comfortably. Players curious about the other end of the family spectrum should also try the FreeCell vs Baker's Game comparison to understand how the same-suit rule interacts with cell count and tableau geometry.

Frequently Asked Questions

Learn More

• How to Play Seahaven Towers — Complete rules and strategy guide
• Seahaven Towers Strategy Guide — Tips and winning tactics
• Play Baker's Game — Same-suit stacking with FreeCell layout
• Play FreeCell — The classic free cell solitaire
• Types of Solitaire — Explore 20+ solitaire variants