Eight Off Solitaire: eight parking spaces and an almost-always-winnable deal
Eight Off is a close relative of FreeCell with a couple of twists that give it a character all of its own. Every card is dealt face up, just as in FreeCell, but you get eight holding cells instead of four, half of them already occupied when the game begins, and you must build in suit. It is a calm, thoughtful game, and with the rules on this site it is one of the most winnable patience games there is.
Below you will find how Eight Off is set up, the rules as they work here, some tips for using those eight cells wisely, and the results of our own testing.
Eight columns, eight cells
- One pack of 52 cards, all dealt face up.
- Eight columns of six cards make up the tableau, using 48 cards.
- Eight cells sit above the columns. The remaining four cards are dealt into four of them, so you begin with four cells occupied and four empty.
- Four foundations, one per suit, built from Ace up to King.
The rules of Eight Off
Finishing an Eight Off game
Move every card to the foundations, each suit in order from Ace to King.
Building on the columns
- A card may go onto the next card up of the same suit: the 7 of hearts onto the 8 of hearts, never onto the 8 of diamonds.
- Only a King may be moved into an empty column.
Using the cells
- Each cell holds one card. Any available card may be parked in an empty cell and played from there later.
- The four cards that start in the cells are ordinary cards you can play whenever they fit.
Moving runs
You can move a same-suit run in one go if you have enough space to "carry" it. On this site the most cards you can move at once is the number of empty cells, plus the number of empty columns, plus one. You could always move the cards one by one instead, so this limit only saves effort; it never changes whether a deal can be won.
How Eight Off differs from FreeCell
| FreeCell | Eight Off | |
|---|---|---|
| Holding cells | 4, all empty | 8, four already filled |
| Building on columns | Alternating colours | Same suit only |
| Empty columns | Any card | Kings only |
| Columns | 8, of six or seven cards | 8, of six cards each |
Same-suit building sounds stricter, and it is: each card has only one possible landing spot in the tableau instead of two. The extra cells make up for it, giving you room to hold cards while you untangle each suit.
Tips for playing Eight Off well
Start with the cells you were given
Look at the four cards that start in the cells. If any of them can go to a foundation or onto its same-suit partner, playing them frees a cell straight away. In our testing, 28% of deals began with at least one Ace already sitting in those pre-filled cells.
Look for Aces you can play right now
In 66% of deals at least one Ace could be played immediately, from a cell or the bottom of a column. Get those up first and look for the 2s to follow.
Think suit by suit
Because every build is in suit, it helps to follow one suit at a time. Where is the 2 of spades? What is sitting on it? Clearing the path for one suit usually opens others along the way.
Keep at least two cells free when you can
Cells fill up quickly in Eight Off, and a full set leaves you moving one card at a time. Try to keep a couple spare, and empty a cell whenever a card in it finds a home.
Only empty a column if a King is ready
Empty columns take Kings only here. A column emptied too early just sits waiting; empty one when you have a King, ideally with its suit-mates stacked beneath, ready to move in.
How often can Eight Off be won?
We ran a solver on 10,000 numbered deals using this site's rules. Every card in Eight Off is face up, so the solver sees exactly what you see, and it reached a firm answer on every single deal.
| Result on 10,000 deals | Share |
|---|---|
| Winnable (a winning line was found) | 99.89% (95% range 99.80% to 99.94%) |
| Proven impossible | 0.11% |
| Left undecided | none |
In other words, only about one deal in 900 cannot be won. If a game of Eight Off gets away from you, the cards were almost certainly on your side, and Undo is there to find the path you missed. The solutions the program found averaged about 35 moves.
Eight Off on solitaire-free.nz
Eight Off is free on solitaire-free.nz and plays in any modern browser on a computer, tablet or phone, with nothing to download and no sign-up or email. Cards are big and clear, and there is a zoom control for extra size. Drag cards, or tap a card and then its destination. Hint, unlimited Undo, Restart and Auto Play are always available, your wins, time and moves are tracked, and you can mute the sound, play fullscreen and pick a table colour.
Where our numbers come from, one step at a time
The solitaire-free.nz team ran this study in September 2026 with the rules used on this page.
- Rules from the game code. Eight columns of six, eight cells with four pre-filled, same-suit building, Kings only in empty columns, and the move-limit rule described above.
- A program that plays by those rules, checked so it only makes legal moves.
- 10,000 numbered deals, each shuffled from a seed number so the test can be repeated with identical cards.
- A solver, not a guesser. With everything face up, a solver has no unfair advantage over you. It searched up to 200,000 positions per deal, which was enough to settle every deal.
- Every deal sorted into winnable or proven impossible, with none left over.
- Checked against published research. A 2026 study by Blake and Gent in the Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research puts Eight Off at 99.8805% winnable, using a rule where cards move one at a time. We ran that same one-at-a-time rule too and got 99.80% solved, with 0.14% proven impossible (95% range 0.08% to 0.24%); the published figure's 0.12% impossible sits inside our range, so the two agree. The site's rule lets you move runs more easily, which rescues a handful of extra deals.
- Margins of error worked out for every percentage, as 95% ranges.
- Limits. The solutions the program found are not necessarily the shortest possible, so "about 35 moves" is a typical tidy game, not a record.
The nuts and bolts
We wrote the simulation in Python 3.11 with no outside libraries. Eight Off lives in freecell2.py, alongside FreeCell Two Decks. The solver is a best-first search: it always explores the most promising position next, remembers every position it has seen so none is searched twice, and makes foundation moves automatically only when they are safe (with same-suit building, every foundation move is). A shared runner uses multiprocessing to share the deals out across the computer's processor cores, and every deal comes from a numbered seed. The 95% ranges are Wilson score intervals.
We used an AI assistant, Claude by Anthropic, to help write and review the code and draft this page. The AI did not produce any numbers; they all come from running the simulation, and we checked them against the published study before publishing.
By Admin, solitaire-free.nz. Study date: September 2026.
Frequently asked questions
Why are four of the eight cells occupied at the deal?
That is how Eight Off is dealt: 48 cards go into the columns and the last four go into cells. They are normal cards, free to play whenever they fit.
Can I build red on black like in FreeCell?
No. In Eight Off you build in suit only.
What may fill an empty column in Eight Off?
Only Kings may fill an empty column here.
Eight Off or FreeCell: which is kinder?
Both are winnable nearly every time. Eight Off asks you to think suit by suit, while its extra cells give you more breathing room.
Which game pairs well with Eight Off?
Try FreeCell to compare, or Baker's Solitaire for another in-suit game. Browse everything on the games page or read more on our blog.