Easthaven Solitaire: small columns, a busy stock, and plenty of hope

Easthaven is a lively one-pack patience game that starts small and fills up quickly. The table begins with just three cards in each of seven columns, and instead of turning cards onto a waste pile, the stock deals a fresh card onto every column at once. It feels a little like Klondike and a little like Spider, and it is friendlier than either once you know its tricks.

This page takes you through the layout, the rules exactly as they work here, some habits that make a real difference, and what our own testing found about how often Easthaven can be won.

Setting up the table

• One standard pack of 52 cards.
• Seven columns of three cards. In each column the top two cards lie face down and the bottom card is face up.
• A 31-card stock holds the rest. There is no waste pile.
• Four foundations to build from Ace to King, one per suit.

How Easthaven is played

Sending all 52 cards up

Get all 52 cards onto the foundations, each suit in order from Ace up to King.

Building runs down the seven columns

• Build downwards in alternating colours: a red 4 onto a black 5, a black 10 onto a red Jack.
• A properly built run can be moved as one unit, as long as its top card fits where it goes.
• When a face-down card is uncovered, it turns face up.
• Any card, or any run, may be placed in an empty column. Not just Kings.

How a stock deal lands across the table

• Clicking the stock deals one card face up onto the bottom of every column, from left to right.
• The stock holds 31 cards, so there are four full deals of seven and one last deal of three cards.
• You may deal even when a column is empty.
• There is no redeal. Once the stock is gone, you finish with what is on the table.

The two rules that make Easthaven friendly

If you have played Klondike, two differences will stand out.

Runs move as a unit. You never have to shuffle a tidy run apart one card at a time. That keeps long sequences flexible and makes it much easier to open up face-down cards.

Any card may fill a space. An empty column is not reserved for a King; it can take whatever helps you most. That turns every empty column into a genuine working space.

Our testing showed just how much these rules matter. Played the site's way, a solver that could see every card found a win in 97.6% of 3,000 deals and did not prove a single deal impossible. When we tried a stricter version where only one card may move at a time, at least 36.9% of deals turned out to be impossible. The friendly rules really do change the game.

Habits that pay off

Uncover before you deal

Each click of the stock drops a new card onto every column, covering whatever was at the bottom. So before you deal, make every useful move you can, especially ones that turn over a face-down card. Once the next deal lands, those cards are buried a little deeper.

Deal when you are stuck, not before

Dealing is not a reward; it is a last resort. It brings new cards, but it also puts a card on top of every column, including your tidy runs. Deal only when the table has nothing useful left to offer.

Use empty columns to reorganise

Because any card may go into a space, an empty column is ideal for sorting out a tangle. Move a run in, move the card beneath it where it belongs, and bring the run back if that helps.

Keep an eye on the last deal

The final deal only gives cards to the first three columns. Plan with that in mind so the right-hand columns are in good shape before the stock runs out.

Hidden Aces are few, but find them

Only two cards per column start face down, so there are fewer hiding places than in Klondike. On average, about 1.06 of the four Aces begin face down in our deals. Digging those out early keeps the foundations moving.

What a first look at the deal tells you

We looked at every opening layout before a single card was moved. In 8.2% of deals, none of the seven face-up cards could be played anywhere, so your very first action is a deal from the stock. Do not be put off by a slow start: with the rules on this site, very few games are truly lost.

Easthaven on solitaire-free.nz

Easthaven on solitaire-free.nz is free, needs no download, no sign-up and no email, and plays in any modern browser on a computer, tablet or phone. The cards are large and clear, with a zoom control if you want them bigger. You can drag a card or tap it and then tap where it should go. Hint, unlimited Undo, Restart and Auto Play are always there, and Undo is especially handy before a stock deal, when you want to check whether one more tableau move was possible. Wins, time and moves are tracked for your game, and you can switch the sound off, go fullscreen and choose a table colour.

Where our numbers come from, one step at a time

The solitaire-free.nz team carried out this study in September 2026, using the rules of Easthaven as played on this page.

1. We checked the rules in the game's own code. Seven columns of three with the bottom card face up, a 31-card stock that deals one card to every column (three on the last deal), no redeal, alternating-colour building, runs moving as a unit, and any card allowed in an empty column.
2. We wrote the game as a program that follows those rules and nothing else.
3. We dealt 3,000 numbered games, each shuffled from a seed number so that anyone can repeat the test with the same cards.
4. We used a "thoughtful" solver. It is allowed to see the face-down cards and the order of the stock, which no real player can. That makes its result a ceiling: the most anyone could hope to win, not what a person should expect.
5. We gave it a search budget of 100,000 positions per deal and sorted each deal into solved, proven impossible, or undecided.
6. We compared our result with published research. A 2026 study by Blake and Gent in the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research gives a figure for East Haven, but for a stricter rule where only one card may move at a time. Because our site lets whole runs move, the two numbers are not comparable, so we do not set them side by side. We also ran a one-card-at-a-time version ourselves on 300 deals, and it did not match the published figure either. We have not yet found why, so we only quote the site-rule result.
7. We worked out the margin of error. The 97.6% has a 95% range of 97.0% to 98.1%.
8. We noted the limits. 2.4% of deals were left undecided, and because the solver peeks at hidden cards, a real player will win fewer than 97.6% of games.

The nuts and bolts

The simulation is Python 3.11 using only the standard library, in a module named easthaven.py. The solver is a depth-first search: it follows one line of play as deep as it can, backs up when it hits a dead end, and keeps a set of positions it has already seen so no position is searched twice. It also plays foundation moves automatically when they are known to be safe. A shared runner uses Python's multiprocessing to spread the deals over the computer's processor cores, and each deal is shuffled from its seed number so it can be reproduced. Percentages carry Wilson score intervals.

An AI assistant, Claude by Anthropic, helped the team write and review the code and draft this page. It did not provide any figures; every number here comes from running the simulation, and we checked our results against published research before publishing.

By Admin, solitaire-free.nz. Study date: September 2026.

Frequently asked questions

What sets Easthaven apart from Klondike?

The stock deals a card onto every column instead of onto a waste pile, runs move as a unit, and any card can go into an empty column.

Can I deal from the stock with an empty column?

Yes. On this site you can deal at any time, empty columns or not.

Can I go through the stock more than once?

No. There is no redeal in Easthaven, so make the most of each deal.

Is Easthaven hard to win?

With the rules used here, very few deals are hopeless: our solver found a win in 97.6% of deals when it could see every card. Real players will win less often than that, but the odds are on your side.

What should I try if I like Easthaven?

For another game where the stock deals across the columns, try Spider Solitaire. For the classic stock-and-waste style, go back to Klondike. The full list is on our games page, and there is more to read on the blog.