How to Play Yukon Solitaire: Rules, Setup, and Winning Strategy

Date: September 1, 2026

Yukon Solitaire is a single-deck card game with no stock pile. All 52 cards are dealt before your first move. Yukon lets you move any face-up card along with every card sitting on top of it.

Those cards can be out of order. That single rule makes Yukon more flexible than Klondike Solitaire, and harder to win. Two solitaire sites that publish player data report Yukon win rates of 12% to 14%.

Klondike Turn 1 sits near 33%. Winning starts with turning over face-down cards. Russian Solitaire uses the same layout but builds the tableau by suit.

What Is Yukon Solitaire?

Yukon Solitaire is a single-player card game played with one 52-card deck. You build four foundation piles from Ace to King. It belongs to the Klondike family, so that the goal will look familiar.

Here is the game at a glance:

Deck: one standard 52-card deck
Goal: four foundation piles, Ace to King, one per suit
Tableau: seven columns of cards
Stock pile: none
Face-up cards at the deal: 31 out of 52
Also called: the Yukon card game

The difference from Klondike is what you are given. There is no stock pile and no waste pile. Every card you will ever play is already on the table when the game begins.

Yukon Setup and Layout (All 52 Cards on the Table)

Yukon deals all 52 cards into seven tableau columns before you make a single move.

The columns are uneven. They fill from left to right like this:

Column 1 holds 1 card, face up.
Columns 2 through 7 hold 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, and 11 cards.
The top five cards of columns 2 through 7 are face up.
Every card beneath those five is face down.
That gives you 31 face-up cards and 21 face-down cards.
Four empty foundation piles sit above the tableau.

Here is why those numbers matter. Klondike shows you 7 cards at the deal. Yukon shows you 31. You can plan several moves from the very first turn.

Yukon Rules: Moving Card Groups

Yukon lets you move any face-up card along with every card stacked on top of it.

The full rules are short:

Build down in alternating colors. Place the 9♥ on the 10♠, but not on the 10♦. Both of those cards are red.
Move a card with its whole stack. Only the card you pick up has to fit the card it lands on.
Build foundations by suit. Go up from the A♠ to the 2♠ to the 3♠, and on to the K♠.
Only a King fills an empty column. A group of cards starting with a King also works.
Face-down cards flip on their own. Move the card above one, and it turns over.

The group rule deserves an example. Say the 9♥ has a 4♣, a 10♦, and a Q♠ stacked on it. You may still move the 9♥ onto the 10♠, and all four cards travel together.

Those cards do not need to be in any order. This rule separates Yukon from every other game in the Klondike family.

Yukon vs Klondike: What Actually Changes

Four rules separate Yukon Solitaire from Klondike Solitaire:

No stock pile or waste pile. Klondike keeps 24 cards in the stock pile. Yukon keeps none.
More visible cards. Klondike shows 7 face-up cards at the deal. Yukon shows 31.
The group moves without a sequence. Klondike only moves a properly ordered run. Yukon moves any stack.
No luck of the draw. In Klondike, the card you need may sit deep in the stock pile. In Yukon, it is already on the table.

Now the part that surprises people. More information does not make Yukon easier.

Klondike players win roughly 33% of Turn 1 games, according to published player data.
Two other solitaire sites reported Yukon win rates near 12% to 14%.
One of those sites reports 13.69% across 626,953 recorded games.

Yukon sits among the hardest solitaire games ranked by win rate. The reason is the group rule. Every time you move a stack, you bury whatever it lands on. With no stock pile to bail you out, a few careless moves can lock the board.

Yukon Strategy: How to Win More Games

Yukon rewards uncovering face-down cards before anything else. These five habits are ranked from most to least important.

1. Turn over face-down cards first. Twenty-one cards start face down. Each one you reveal adds new legal moves. Start with the columns holding the fewest face-down cards, since those open up fastest.

2. Send Aces and 2s up promptly. An Ace does no work in the tableau. Move it to the foundation as soon as it appears. Hold back your 3s through 7s, because those middle cards are what you build sequences on.

3. Look at what you are carrying. Check every card riding along before a group move. A move that frees one face-down card while burying three useful ones is a bad trade. This is the most common mistake in Yukon.

4. Empty a column only when a King is ready. An empty column with no King to fill it is dead space. Find your King first, then clear the column.

5. Test a move before you commit. Use the undo button to try a group move and see what it buries. There is no penalty for backing up.

Yukon takes practice. Even experienced players lose more games than they win. A loss often means the deal was difficult, not that you played badly. When you cannot find a legal move, the hint button will point one out.

Yukon vs Russian Solitaire

Russian Solitaire uses the same layout as Yukon. It builds the tableau by suit instead of by alternating colors.

That one change is severe:

In Yukon, either red 9 can go on the 10♠.
In Russian, only the 9♠ can go on the 10♠.
The result: you lose half your building options on every card.
Win rates: the site reports 12% for Yukon, putting Russian at about 2.5%.
Alaska Solitaire: the same suit rule, but you may build up or down.

Start with Yukon. Move to Russian once you win Yukon regularly. Our guide to the types of solitaire games covers the rest of the family.

Play Yukon Solitaire Free Online

Solitaire.com runs in your browser. Here is what you get:

No downloads and no signup required
Classic scoring, not Vegas scoring
Unlimited undos in every game
A hint button for when you are stuck
A new Daily Challenge every day

Play Yukon Solitaire for free at Solitaire.com, and start a new deal whenever you like.