FreeCell Strategy Guide

Before you do anything else, scan the whole board for Aces and 2s. Where are they? How deep are they buried? If an Ace is stuck under five cards, that column is your top priority. Every early move should work toward uncovering these low cards. Getting Aces to the foundations early starts a chain reaction. Once the Ace is placed, the 2 becomes playable, then the 3, and so on. Nothing clears space faster.

Free cells are your most important resource, and the #1 beginner mistake is filling them too early. Every occupied free cell reduces how many cards you can move at once. With all four filled, you can only move one card at a time, which usually means you're stuck. Think of free cells as an emergency reserve. Only use them when you have to, and prioritize emptying them again right away. Good rule of thumb: if three or more free cells are full, stop and clear them before doing anything else.

An empty column is even more powerful than a free cell. It can hold an entire sequence of cards, not just one. The supermove formula doubles with each empty column you have. Clearing a column early gives you way more move capacity and opens up options that just don't exist when all columns are full. Once you clear a column, think hard before filling it again. Only do it if the move clearly pushes your game forward.

Undo is the single best learning tool you have. Try a sequence of moves. If it leads nowhere, undo and try something completely different. Over time, you'll start recognizing dead ends before you reach them. That's how every expert learned. Lots of winning strategies only show up after you've explored (and undone) several different paths. Don't feel bad about using undo. It's how you build intuition.

When you can choose between building with alternating suits or keeping cards in the same suit, go same-suit whenever practical. Same-suit sequences (like 7♠ on 8♠) move directly to the foundation without breaking apart. Mixed-suit sequences have to be taken apart card by card. That doesn't mean mixed sequences are bad. They're still useful. But when you have the choice, same-suit is almost always better long-term.

Before every move, think about where it leads. Ask yourself: "After this move, what does it open up? And then what?" Good players see chains of moves, not individual actions. A move that does nothing on its own might be brilliant if it's step one of a 10-move chain that clears an entire column. On the flip side, a move that looks great right now might be terrible if it blocks a key card three moves later. Get in the habit of tracing consequences at least 5 steps out.

A long, perfectly ordered sequence looks satisfying, but it locks up an entire column. You can't reach any cards underneath, and moving it somewhere else takes a lot of empty space. Only build sequences when they actually serve your plan, when those cards need to be stacked for foundation building. Stacking just because you can is a classic intermediate trap. Ask yourself: "Does this sequence help me reach an Ace or build a foundation?" If not, skip it.

Try to keep your four foundation piles roughly even. If one suit gets way ahead of the others, you'll hit a wall where you can't auto-move cards because their dependencies haven't reached the foundations yet. Say your spades are at 9♠ but hearts are still at 3♥. You won't be able to auto-move any black cards past 4, because the game needs both red foundations caught up first. Keeping foundations balanced keeps auto-move flowing and prevents bottlenecks.

Before your first move, spend 30 seconds reading the board. Find all four Aces. Which ones are easiest to reach? What's buried deep? Are any columns close to empty? Do you see in-suit sequences already forming? Which columns are the messiest? This quick scan prevents the most common cause of losses: jumping into a plan before you understand what you're working with. Experts often spend more time on this opening read than on the first 10 moves combined.

When two moves look equally good, always pick the one that's easier to reverse. Moving a card to a free cell? Highly reversible. You can move it back anytime. Dropping a King into an empty column? Basically permanent, since nothing stacks on top of a King in cascade ordering. Reversible moves keep your options open. Irreversible moves lock you into one path. The more reversible your early moves are, the more you learn before you have to commit.

Sometimes the only way forward is to temporarily take apart an entire column. Move its cards into free cells and empty columns, do what you need to underneath, then put everything back. This is the hardest technique in FreeCell and requires precise counting. Before you try it, calculate: do you have enough empty free cells and columns to hold all the cards? Use the supermove formula: (1 + free cells) × 2^(empty columns). If you need to move more cards than that number, the shuffle won't work and you need a different approach.

If all 4 free cells are full and you have no empty columns, you're usually (but not always) stuck. Before you give up, check every possible move carefully. Sometimes one foundation move or an unexpected cascade placement opens everything up. But if you've checked everything and there's truly nothing left, the smart play is to recognize the loss and start a new game. Don't waste time. Experts know when to cut their losses. Ten minutes on a lost position is time you could spend winning the next game.