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Card games for one player are called Patience in Britain and Solitaire in America. The web site pagat.com is devoted mostly to games for more than one player, but on this page I have provided some links to sites which specialise in one-player games. Some of these sites contain rules or analysis, and many of them provide software, since these solitary games are particularly suitable for play against a computer. If you have further links or information that should be included on this page, please let me know.
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This page deals with solitaire (patience) games played with playing-cards. There are separate pages for:
- Video poker (usually played against a gaming machine which displays cards on a screen)
- Competitive Patience games: solitaire-like games for more than one player.
Here is a link to an article by David Parlett on the Origins and History of Patience / Solitaire.
Randy Rasa's Solitaire Central site contains a wide range of information, including a searchable Solitaire Rulebook with descriptions of numerous games, a searchable collection of reviews of computer solitaire games for download, plus reviews of online solitaire games.
Here is an archive copy of Gordon Bower's Solitaire pages, which have rules of several solitaires, old and new, and investigations of the probability of winning.
For information about Freecell, see Michael Keller's Freecell site, including a tutorial, a catalog of solutions and free computer program Freecell Pro. A further collection of Freecell links can be found at Freecell.org.
Michael Keller also runs the Solitaire Laboratory, which includes a section on Giza.
The rules section of the BVS Solitaire site has rules for hundreds of solitaire games.
Boris Sandberg's BVS Solitaire is a collection of 487 different solitaire games for Windows. He has also published BVS Solitaire for Mac OS X.The software allows the user to create new games by modifying the rules of the included games. The author writes: 'You'll be able to learn solitaires not found elsewhere. BVS Solitaire Collection gives you a plethora of statistical and scoring screens. You can track your performance and progress in playing solitaire about as completely as many people use a computer to track their finances. And you can publish your personal statistics on the BVS Solitaire Collection web site to appear in the top scores list.'
BVS also runs sites giving rules and strategy tips for Freecell and Spider, with free trial downloads of these games.
EndersGame's What You Should Know About Solitaire Card Games is the first of a series of articles tracing the history and terminology of Solitaire/Patience games and their recent success as popular computer games.
1st Free Solitaire for Windows 95/98/Me/2000/XP/2003 is a free 'lite' version of Boris Sandberg's BVS Solitaire, consisting of 7 popular solitaire card games: Yukon, FreeCell, Klondike, Flower Garden, Nestor, Bisley, Carpet.
The Single Player Card Games page of the Card Game Heaven site has rules of several Solitaire games.
Thomas Warfield's Pretty Good Solitaire is a collection of 770 solitaire games for Windows. Users can have their win/loss statistics posted on the web site. The site also contains the rules for all these games. From the same site you can also obtain Action Solitaire, in which you play for points against the clock in timed rounds, and Pretty Good Mahjongg, a collection of solitaire games using Mah Jong and other tile sets, including the well-known tile matching game, and also Mah Jong tile solitaires based on Freecell, Spider and Klondike.
SolSuite by TreeCardGames Inc. is a high quality Windows shareware collection more than 630 different Solitaire games including Klondike, FreeCell, Spider, Pyramid, Golf, Busy Aces, Canfield, Forty Thieves, Diplomat, Four Seasons, Poker Solitaire, Flower Garden, Rouge et Noir, Scorpion, Monte Carlo, Sultan, La Belle Lucie, Gaps and several original games. Features include unlimited undo and redo, Snapshot position and Undo to snapshot, comprehensive statistics, customisable playing-cards and backgrounds, and an editor that lets you change the rules of any game.
HOYLE Card Games for Windows or Mac OS X includes a collection of solitaire games, which are also available as a separate package.
Microsoft's Solitaire, a computer version of Klondike Solitaire created by Wes Cherry, was included with every version of Windows from 3.0 to 7. For later versions of Windows the Microsoft Solitaire Collection is available as a free download.
Aisleriot Solitaire is a free collection of over 80 solitaire games programmed in the GNOME scripting language and available for Linux, Windows and Hildon platforms. A manual is available that lists and describes the games.
Amy Bassett's Spider Solitaire site provides several free HTML5 versions of Spider Solitaire that can be played online in a web browser.
Laura Ockel's Tesseract Mobile publishes Android apps using a dynamic card design with different styles for exposed and partly concealed cards to improve readability. There is a Solitaire Free Pack with over 100 games and a Solitaire Mega Pack with over 250 games.
Zonora Technologies offers several shareware collections of solitaire games with comprehensive statistics and save, undo and replay facilities.
Solitaire.com is an English language edition of the Dutch site PatienceSpelen.nl with around 40 free games that can be played online in your browser; a German edition is also available at KartenSpielen.de. The Freecell game on these sites has a mechanism and game numbers consistent with the Microsoft Windows version.
Emily Krieger's Solitaire Cardgames site offers a selection of free online games along with sections of the history and startegy of solitaire.
James Yates has written pages on Solitaire Strategy and Vegas-style Scoring, which discuss the strategy of Klondike Solitaire.
From Andreas Sauer's site you can download the AS-Solitaire package for Windows which offers 120 games and a huge range of card designs.
WebTV users: the following sites provide Solitaire games that can be played on-line - no downloads and no Java required!
- Solitaire at Bill's Games
- Marc Brocoum's Ace Games server with Solitaire (Klondike) and some other games.
Here are the rules for Cribbage Solitaire, in which you play Cribbage against the deck.
You can play Solitaire at GameDuell. - they offer a range of Solitaire games that can be played for fun or for money.
Rick Holzgrafe's Semicolon Software publishes Solitaire Till Dawn, a collection of around 100 solitaire computer programs for the Macintosh, with rules and strategy tips.
Scott McNab's Card Games 4 Free site reviews a range of free Solitaire games.
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You can download Miha's Windows shareware collection 18 card games for 1 player which includes Freecell, Four Seasons, Golf, Alternate, Canfield, Auld Lang Syne, Castles in Spain, Klondike, Ship shape and Bristol fashion, The Battle of Ladies, Son of fortune, The Beleaguered Castle, Bisley, Fortress, Grandpa's clock, Princ Albert, Quadrille and Raglan. The free version gives access to a limited selection of these - to play all 18 you need to register the package, which includes a facility for the user to add further games by specifying their rules in a text file.
Solitaired.com offers a large collection of free solitaire games that can be played online in a web browser.
John Punzak's EverydayGames.net has a collection of Java solitaire games which can be played in a web browser. They include Klondike, Spider, Scorpion, Pyramid, Canfield, Freecell and others.
TrapApps offers a wide range of free solitaire games to play online in a web browser.
Albert Henderson's Solitaire with Cards is a collection of free solitaires written in Javascript which can be played online in a web browser.
Here is an ad-free version of Holger Sindbaek's Solitaire Online where you can play Klondike, Spider and Freecell online in a web browser.
At the Solitaire Bliss site you can play Klondike, Spider, Freecell and Pyramid free online.
123 Free Solitaire is a freeware collection of solitaire games by TreeCardGames Inc. The same organisation also publishes several more free collections such as NetSolitaire and Spider Solitaire.
Dig Solitaire has a range of free online solitaire games.
At CardzMania.com you can play several solitaire games online: FreeCell, Klondike, Seahaven Towers, Spider and Yukon.
From Funkitron you can buy a Solitaire Kingdom Supreme - a variation of Klondike Solitaire for Windows or Mac in which the pack contains various bonus cards and key cards which confer special powers when discovered.
Solitr is a free open-source JavaScript-based Klondike game by Jo Liss.
DKM software offers an range of free online Solitaire games.
Game Colony offers Freecell, Solitaire and Rush-21 head to head games and multi-player tournaments, which can be played free or for cash prizes.
Here is a link to David Bernazzani's free Solitude for Windows software.
The shareware Absolutist Solitaire Studio has a range of solitaire games and a Solitaire Script language which allows you to design your own games and add them to the program.
PySol is a free open source collection of solitaire games which can run on Unix, Windows and Macintosh computers.. The original project by Markus Oberhumer officially ended in 2004, but was continued and extended by the PySol Fan Club. The collection now includes more than 1000 solitaire games.
At Solitaire Paradise, you can play verious solitaire games including Tri-Peaks Classic, a more skilful variation of the popular Tri-Towers solitaire game, the similar Golf Solitaire and also Tower Solitaire, a variation of Pyramid Solitaire in which one card can be placed in a temporary store, Forty Thieves and Thieves of Egypt.
At the free Solitaire100 site you can play Klondike, Spider, Pyramid and Freecell online your web browser - no download is required.
At Solitaire Mania you can play a number of free solitaire games online in your browser.
Laura Jensen has written a free Spider Solitaire game which can be played in a web browser with 1, 2 or 4 suits.
Code This Lab's HTML5 Spider, Freecell, Klondike and Pyramid solitaire games, which can be played in a browser, are available from Envato Market where you can play online or buy the code.
Amber Mango, a UK company based in York, offers Freecell3D, a 3D rendered version of Freecell with the emphasis on looks and features. The game features an animated solver and a the split-screen Race Mode where you compete against the computer to finish the same deal first.
Solitär Spielen has a selection of free online Solitaire games. Although the pages are in German, the game interfaces are in English.
Harpan.se is a Swedish site providing a range of Solitaire games that can be played online in a browser. 'Harpan' is the Swedish word for Patience or Solitaire.
At ArcadeGamePlace you can play Magic Room Solitaire (a variant of Spider solitaire in which suits are ignored) and Waikiki Solitaire (a simple game of matching pairs of cards).
North Star Solutions' Poker Challenge is a computer solitaire game for Windows in which the objective is to identify and remove high scoring poker hands from a playing-card layout.
Maurits van der Schee's AceCardGames site has twelve Flash solitaire games that can be played on line. (You will need to download the free Flash 7 player if you don't already have it).
DogMelon offers solitaire games for PC, Palm and eBookman.
Here are Rudy Muller's rules for Rangoon (also known as Station, Blue-Moon, Gaps, Montana Aces). The page also has details of his computer program for playing it.
The Italian site Solitari con le carte has rules and software for several games.
Here is John Kanold's SolKan32 for Windows,which plays about 200 different Solitaire games including several not found in other packages.
The Softgame Company's Funsol Solitaire plays hundreds of solitaire games.
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The Solitaire Network has a collection of 30 Java Soliatire games that are free to play on line without registration.
Mike's Cards is a shareware collection of solitaire games for Macintosh and Windows computers. A freeware version Mike's Cards Lite is also available from the same site.
Solitaire Forever offers a collection of over 100 solitaire games with 3D graphics for Macs running OS X 10.2 or higher; they will run on PowerPC or Intel Macs but no longer work with OS 9.
Spielhalle24.net has several free Solitaire games that can be played online in a browser.
Solitaire King has several free solitaire games that can be played online in a browser.
Poki has a small selection of solitaire games that can be played online in a browser.
Pete Wiseman's Solitaire City offers ten Solitaire games for Windows, iOS and mobile devices (45 if variations are counted). These are timed games against the clock - the faster you play, the higher you score.
Mike Perry's Allgood Solitaire (formerly Poor man's Solitaire) for the Macintosh includes a range of games.
At playsolitaire-online.com you can play Klondike and 30 other solitaire games online in a browser.
Neon Games has some solitaire games that can be played online.
Klondike Solitaire can be played online at playsolitaire.io.
The Solitaire Bodies page has Klondike Solitaire games with pinup cards that can be played on line or downloaded.
Here is Brian Bain's Windows Solitaire program. Standard Solitaire but with a variety of card deck options and the possibility to design your own deck.
Rules (in French) for La loi Salique and Pyramide are available from Jean-François Bustarret's site.
Tim Winter's Game Suite a collection of nine solitaire card games - not traditional solitaire games but games in which you race against a clock.
Here are Mike Lalena's Java Games: Eleven Out, Fun21, Poker Flash, Quick21 and others. Again, these are games played against the clock. Most of them were originally developed for the coin operated touch screen game systems usually found at bars.
Note - links to Video Poker games have been moved from here to the Video Poker page. Links to Tile Matching games are now on the Tile Matching page.