FreeCell Two Decks: the big-table version of the thinking player's favourite

FreeCell Two Decks takes the game where every card is on show and makes it roomier in every direction. Two packs, ten columns, eight free cells and eight foundations: it is FreeCell on a grand scale. Nothing is hidden, so there is no luck of the draw, just a large, open puzzle to work through at your own pace.

If you already enjoy FreeCell, you will feel at home within a minute. This page explains how the two-pack version is laid out, how it differs, some approaches that help on a crowded table, and what our testing found about how often it can be won.

What is on the table

• 104 cards, two full packs shuffled together, all dealt face up.
• Ten columns. The first four columns hold eleven cards each and the other six hold ten.
• Eight free cells, each able to hold one card while you work.
• Eight foundations, two for each suit, built from Ace up to King.

There is no stock pile. Every card you will ever play is already in front of you.

How to play

Clearing all 104 cards

Move all 104 cards onto the eight foundations. Each suit has two piles, and either Ace of a suit may start either of its piles.

Four places a card can go

• Onto a column: a card may go on a card one rank higher and of the opposite colour, such as a red 9 on a black 10.
• Into a free cell: any available card can be parked in an empty cell.
• Onto a foundation: Aces start the piles, then each suit climbs in order.
• Into an empty column: any card, or a run, may go into an emptied column.

Moving several cards at once

The game lets you move a tidy run in one go, using your empty cells and columns as stepping stones. On this site the most cards you can shift at once is the number of empty free cells, plus the number of empty columns, plus one. With five empty cells and one empty column, that is seven cards. It never stops you winning a deal, since you could always move the same cards one at a time; it simply saves clicks.

How it feels different from one-pack FreeCell

Two things stand out once you start playing.

More space, more options. Eight free cells is a generous amount of parking. You can afford to experiment, and one poor choice rarely sinks you at once.

Twin cards. Every card has a double. When you need a black Jack to take your red 10, there are four black Jacks in play instead of two. That makes planning a little more forgiving, but it also means more decisions: which twin should move, and which should stay?

The flip side is length. A two-pack game has twice the cards to put away, and it rewards a steady, organised approach over flashes of inspiration.

Approaches that help on a big table

Start by finding the Aces and 2s

With 104 cards showing, it is easy to miss the ones that matter most. Scan every column for Aces and low cards first. In our testing, 55% of deals had at least one Ace ready to play straight away.

Treat free cells as tools, not storage

Eight cells feels like a lot until they fill up. Use them to reach a specific card, then empty them again as soon as you can. A full set of cells with no empty column leaves you moving one card at a time.

Aim for an empty column early

The six ten-card columns are your best targets. An empty column accepts any card here, which makes it one of the most useful spaces on the table.

Keep each suit's two piles close together

If one spades pile races ahead while the other stalls, low spades end up with only one home. Keeping the pairs level means more cards always have a place to go.

Choose the twin that frees more

When both copies of a card could make the same move, move the one that uncovers something useful beneath it.

How often can it be won?

We tested this version with a solver: a program that can see every card (as you can in FreeCell) and searches for a way to clear the table. It was given a fixed amount of searching per deal, measured in positions examined.

So somewhere between 88% and 100% of deals can be won, and in 400 deals we did not find a single one that was proven impossible. The undecided deals are probably not lost causes. They are big positions that needed more searching than we gave them. The solutions the program found took about 148 moves on average, which gives you a feel for how long a tidy game runs.

FreeCell Two Decks on solitaire-free.nz

It is free to play in any modern browser on a computer, tablet or phone, with no download, no sign-up and no email. The cards are large and clear, and on a two-pack table the zoom control really earns its keep. Drag cards or tap a card and then its destination. Hint, unlimited Undo, Restart and Auto Play are always on, and your wins, time and moves are tracked for each game. Sound can be switched off, and you can play fullscreen with a table colour of your choice.

Where our numbers come from, one step at a time

This study was run by the solitaire-free.nz team in September 2026, using the rules of the game on this page.

1. Reading the rules in the game code. Two packs, ten columns of eleven and ten cards, eight cells, eight foundations, alternating-colour building, any card into an empty column, and the multi-card move limit described above.
2. Rebuilding the game as a program that makes only those legal moves.
3. Dealing numbered games. We used 400 deals from seed numbers 101 to 500. Seeds 1 to 8 had been used to tune the program, so we kept them out of the results.
4. Choosing a solver. Because every card is face up, a solver sees exactly what you see. It searched up to 150,000 positions per deal before calling a deal undecided.
5. Sorting every deal into one of three groups: solved, proven impossible, or undecided.
6. Looking at the opening deal to count Aces available at once.
7. Checking against published work. We could find no published figure for two-pack FreeCell, so there is nothing to compare this result with yet.
8. Stating the limits. 400 deals is a smaller sample than we used for most games, which is why the range is a few points wide. The 12% undecided could be narrowed with a longer search.

The nuts and bolts

The code is Python 3.11, standard library only. This game is in freecell2.py, which also handles Eight Off. The solver uses best-first search: it always looks next at the position that seems closest to a win, keeps a record of positions already seen so it never searches the same one twice, and makes only foundation moves that are provably safe automatically. A shared runner spreads deals across the computer's processor cores with multiprocessing, and every deal is shuffled from its seed number so it can be reproduced. The 95% ranges are Wilson score intervals.

We used Claude, an AI assistant made by Anthropic, to help write and review the simulation code and to draft this page. The figures did not come from the AI; they come from running the program, and the team checked the work against published research before publishing.

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

Frequently asked questions

Is FreeCell Two Decks harder than normal FreeCell?

It is longer rather than harder. The extra free cells and twin cards give you more room, but there are twice as many cards to put away.

Did the solver meet any deal it could not win?

We found no deal that was proven impossible in 400 tries. The solver won 88% outright and ran out of search time on the rest.

What limits a group move on the big table?

Empty free cells plus empty columns plus one. You can always move the same cards one at a time instead.

Does an emptied column take any card at all?

Yes. Any card or run may fill an empty column in this game.

New to FreeCell altogether: where do I begin?

Try one-pack FreeCell first. For another two-pack game, this time with a stock, have a look at Solitaire Double, or browse the games page and our blog.