Canfield Solitaire Tips: The 13-Card Reserve, Up-by-Suit Foundations and Beating a Hard Patience (2026)

1. The deal you actually get

One deck is shuffled and split three ways. Thirteen cards go face down into the reserve, and only the top one is turned face up — that single card is the only reserve card you may play, and the reserve never refills. Four cards are dealt face up, one to each of the four columns. The remaining 35 cards are the stock, all face down. So the opening is 13 in the dog, four on the table, 35 waiting: a hard position by design.

Read the opening by the Ace. Foundations build up by suit from any Ace, so the first question is always: do I have an Ace? In the 3,000 measured deals an Ace sat among the reserve or the four columns at the deal about 81% of the time, and a first move existed about two thirds of deals. When neither is true, the only thing to do is deal the stock — which is exactly the situation Canfield is built to punish.

2. Foundations are the only safe move — send every Ace home

A card moved to a foundation never has to come back: foundations only grow, so every foundation move is permanent progress with no downside. The board enforces the suit strictly — a 2 of spades goes on an Ace of spades and not on an Ace of hearts, a 3 will not skip onto an Ace, and an empty foundation refuses anything but an Ace. Any Ace opens any foundation.

So the highest-value habit in Canfield is: the moment an Ace is playable, send it home, then feed its foundation whenever the next card of that suit appears. A foundation that reaches the mid-ranks is a permanent sink that can absorb several more cards, and the build-up direction means a low foundation keeps taking cards all game. Burying an Ace under junk on a column is the single most expensive mistake on the board.

3. Columns build down by alternating colour — one card, and only a King opens

The four columns build down by alternating colour: a red 6 goes on a black 7, never on another black 7, and never on a wrong rank. The board rejects a same-colour card and a wrong rank alike. Two rules separate Canfield from the Klondike it resembles: only the top card of a column may be moved — there are no sequences, no dragging a run — and only a King may fill an empty column.

Practical consequence: a column is a stack of single decisions, not a run you can shuffle. Every tableau card is face up here — only the reserve is hidden — so moving a card between columns is useful for exactly two reasons: it frees the card beneath it toward a foundation, or it parks a King you are saving for an empty slot. A move that does neither generally should wait; the measured baseline only shifts a card to a column when it frees the one below or drops a King onto an empty column.

4. The reserve is the whole game

Other solitaires hand you a waste pile you can mine repeatedly; Canfield gives you 13 face-down cards whose top is revealed as you spend it, once, with no refill. Every time you play a reserve card the card beneath turns face up, so the reserve is a slow-revealing hand you cannot reshuffle. The reserve top also auto-places: tap it and it flies to a foundation if it can, otherwise to a column.

So spend the reserve only on cards that extend a foundation or clean a column toward one — never to shuffle a card onto a column just to change the pile shape. A reserve card that merely moves onto a column is a card you have burned from a supply you can never renew, and it took the identity of the next card into hiding at the same time. The measured baseline, which never plans, spends only about 2.7 of its 13 reserve cards before it runs out of moves — and that restraint is the ceiling on how far it gets.

5. The stock: deal only when the board is quiet, and never twice

Tapping the stock deals one face-up card onto each of the four columns (or onto just the first two if only two cards remain), a single pass with no redeal. Each deal thickens every column, which usually buries cards rather than freeing them, so a deal is a move of last resort. The habit: push every foundation and every freeing move first, then deal — and only when the position is quiet do you accept another round.

The measurement makes the cost concrete. The weak baseline deals the stock relentlessly whenever nothing else moves — about 8.8 deals a game, finishing the 35-card stock almost every time — and still ends up genuinely stuck in about 91% of deals with only about 6 of 52 cards home. Dealing is not progress; it is a way to postpone the reckoning for a few more cards.

6. How hard is it, really? Very — and the numbers say so

Canfield has a reputation as one of the hardest classic patiences, and the measurement does not soften it. Playing 3,000 random deals with a deliberately weak but legal greedy baseline — send any card home, otherwise move a card that frees the one beneath or lands a King, otherwise deal the stock, never plan ahead — the baseline won 0 of 3,000 and completed not a single foundation. It sent about 6 of 52 cards home on average (median 6; the middle 80% between 3 and 9), spent about 2.7 of 13 reserve cards, ran the stock down to under a card, and ended genuinely stuck (stock spent, nothing placeable) in about 91% of deals.

Do not read those zeros as a broken game — read them as the honest shape of Canfield. The deals are real and winnable (the build verifies a clean win path), but a policy that only reacts never assembles the 13-card runs that foundations need, because it cannot look ahead to the two or three specific cards a foundation still wants. The skill this game asks for is planning around the reserve: dig for the ranks your foundations are missing, keep an Ace or two unburied, and withhold the stock and the reserve until they buy the exact card you need. The naive baseline does the opposite of all three, and that is the whole distance between 0 wins and a real finish rate.

Termination honesty: the baseline stops on a genuinely stuck position, on the first repeated board (a state-set that forbids revisits), or at a 2,000-step cap. Across 3,000 deals the loop guard fired in about 2.5% and the step cap never fired; no capped or loop-stopped deal is hidden inside the averages.

FAQ

How do you play Canfield Solitaire?

Deal 13 cards face down to a reserve and turn its top card up, deal one card to each of four columns, and leave 35 as the stock. Build four foundations up by suit from any Ace, build the columns down by alternating colour moving only the top card, and put only Kings on empty columns. Tap the stock to deal one card onto each column, with no redeal. Win by sending all 52 cards to the foundations.

Does the reserve ever refill?

No. The reserve holds 13 cards, reveals its top as you spend it, and never refills once empty. That scarcity is the heart of the game — spend a reserve card only when it extends a foundation or cleans a column.

Can I move a whole run down a column?

No. Only the top card of a column is movable, and only a King may start an empty column. Canfield looks like Klondike but has no multi-card drag — each column move is a single card.

Should I deal the stock early if I have no moves?

Only as a last resort. Dealing thickens every column and usually buries useful cards. Play every foundation and freeing move first; about 81% of deals expose an Ace among the reserve and columns, so look hard before dealing. In the measured baseline, relentless dealing still ended stuck about 91% of the time.

Why is Canfield so hard to win?

Because a reacting, plan-free policy never assembles a 13-card foundation: it needs three or four specific cards to appear together, and both the reserve and the stock bury as often as they help. The measured naive baseline won 0 of 3,000 and finished 0 foundations — winning requires digging on purpose and holding the reserve and stock until they buy the card you need.

What is the deal number under the title?

It identifies the shuffle. Add ?deal=12345 to the page URL to replay that exact board, and share the number to compare the same deal. Without it every load deals a fresh random board.

Does it work on a phone?

Yes. The board is fitted to both production stages — 348x261 and 894x670 — with no overflow and a real touch tap moving a card exactly once through the same code path as a mouse click. Reserve, foundations and columns all sit inside the frame with no horizontal scroll.

Where can I play it?

Right on this site's canfield solitaire page. The engine, renderer, card model, RNG, sound and stylesheet are the MIT-licensed solitaire-collection by muzsor (commit 13ce580c) shipped byte-identical; that pin has no Canfield, so the rules module is Playnesta-original and follows the same contract as the upstream klondike module. Cards are DOM elements and sounds are WebAudio synthesis, so no bitmap, audio or font asset ships and nothing is fetched at runtime.