Solitaire Double: Klondike with two packs and twice the room
Solitaire Double takes everything you love about Klondike and doubles the pack. There are 104 cards, nine columns instead of seven, and eight foundations to fill instead of four. It looks daunting the first time the cards land, but it plays more kindly than it looks, and a long game of it is one of the most satisfying ways to fill a quiet evening.
If you know ordinary Klondike, you already know nearly every rule. This page explains the differences, shares some habits that suit the bigger table, and passes on what our own testing found when we dealt thousands of two-pack games.
How the double deal is laid out
- Two full packs are shuffled together: 104 cards, with two of every card.
- Nine columns form the tableau. The first holds one card, the second two, and so on up to nine cards in the last. Only the bottom card of each column is face up.
- A 59-card stock holds everything left over.
- Eight foundations wait at the top: two for each suit.
The rules, plain and simple
The finish line: eight full foundations
Build all eight foundations from Ace to King. Because there are two of every card, each suit gets two foundations, and either Ace of hearts can start either hearts pile.
How cards move on the double table
- Build down in alternating colours: a black 5 onto a red 6, a red Jack onto a black Queen.
- Whole face-up runs can be moved together if the top card fits.
- A face-down card turns over as soon as it is uncovered.
- Only a King, or a run starting with a King, may fill an empty column.
Your 59 spare cards
- This game turns one card at a time. The top waste card is always available.
- When the stock is empty, turn the waste back over and keep going. There is no limit on how many times.
If you would like to turn three at a time, the game's Draw 3 option takes you to our single-pack Solitaire Turn 3, because on this site the two-pack game is played with one card at a time.
Why two packs make things easier
It sounds as though more cards should mean more trouble, but the second pack works in your favour. Every card has a twin. When you need a black 8 to take your red 7, there are four black 8s in play instead of two, so the chance that one of them is free is much higher. Foundations help too: with two piles per suit, a card that cannot go on one hearts pile may well fit on the other.
Our testing bore this out strongly. A simple computer player, the same one we use for ordinary Klondike, won 81.5% of 10,000 two-pack deals. On single-pack Klondike Turn 1 the same player won 42.3%. That is close to twice as often, with no change in skill.
Habits that suit the bigger table
Clear the long columns
The ninth column starts with eight cards face down. Freeing the right-hand columns gives you the biggest supply of new cards, and the most chances of an early empty column.
Keep both foundations for a suit moving
It is easy to race one hearts pile up to 9 while the other sits at 2. Try to keep the two piles roughly level, so a stray 3 or 4 always has somewhere to go.
Twins make choices, so choose well
When two identical cards could make the same move, pick the one that uncovers something. A red 6 sitting on a face-down card is worth moving before a red 6 sitting on another face-up card.
Be patient with Kings
There are eight Kings, and only empty columns can take them. Do not rush to empty a column unless a King is ready to move in; an empty column waiting for a King that is buried deep is a column you cannot use.
Settle in for a longer evening
In our testing, the computer player's winning games took about 268 moves on average (counting each card turned from the stock as a move) and went through the stock 2.7 times. That is more than double the moves of a single-pack game, so settle in, and use the tracked time and moves to see whether you can tidy up your play from one game to the next.
A kinder start than single-pack Klondike
We also looked at the opening deal before any card was moved. With nine face-up cards to choose from, only 2.7% of two-pack deals offered no move at all at the start, compared with 8.6% in ordinary Klondike. On average 2.8 of the eight Aces begin hidden under face-down cards, so there is still some digging to do, but you will rarely be stuck from the first card.
Solitaire Double on solitaire-free.nz
The game is free and plays straight in your browser on a computer, tablet or phone. There is nothing to install, no account and no email. The cards are big and clear, with a zoom control for a crowded two-pack table, which is especially welcome on a smaller screen. Drag cards or tap to move them. Hint, unlimited Undo, Restart and Auto Play are there whenever you want them, and Auto Play is a real treat at the end of a long two-pack game. Your wins, time and moves are tracked, and you can mute the sound, go fullscreen and change the table colour.
Where our numbers come from, one step at a time
The solitaire-free.nz team ran these tests in September 2026 on the rules used by this very page.
- Checking the rules in the game's code. 104 cards, nine columns of 1 to 9, a 59-card stock, one card turned at a time, unlimited trips through the stock, alternating-colour building, whole runs moving, and Kings only in empty columns.
- Writing the game as a program. We took our tested single-pack Klondike program and extended it to nine columns and two foundations per suit.
- Dealing 10,000 numbered games. Each deal comes from a seed number, so the same deals can be played again at any time.
- Choosing the player. A rule-following player that sees only the face-up cards, as you do, and never undoes a move. Its result is a floor: a thoughtful person using Undo should do at least as well.
- Looking at every opening deal to count hidden Aces and deals with no first move.
- Measuring the margin of error. The 81.5% has a 95% range of 80.7% to 82.2%, which tells you the true figure for this player is very unlikely to lie outside that band.
- Checking against published work. We could find no published figure for this two-pack game, so there is nothing to compare with, and we say so plainly.
- Being clear about limits. We did not run a solver on the two-pack game, so we cannot say how many deals are winnable with perfect play, only that most are won even by a simple player.
The nuts and bolts
The simulation is written in Python 3.11 with nothing beyond the standard library. The two-pack game lives in doubleklondike.py, which reuses the player from our single-pack klondike.py. A shared runner splits the 10,000 deals across the computer's processor cores using multiprocessing, and the whole batch ran in a few seconds. Every deal is shuffled from its seed, so the run can be repeated exactly. Percentages carry Wilson score intervals as their 95% ranges.
We had help from an AI assistant, Claude by Anthropic, in writing and reviewing the code and drafting this page. The AI supplied no figures of its own: every number above is what the code produced, and the team checked the study against published research before we published it.
By Admin, solitaire-free.nz. Study date: September 2026.
Frequently asked questions
Does a second pack make the game tougher?
It takes longer, but in our testing it was won far more often: 81.5% for a simple computer player, against 42.3% with one pack.
Can I play it turning three cards?
On this site the two-pack game turns one card at a time. The Draw 3 option takes you to single-pack Solitaire Turn 3.
Which foundation should a card go on when both fit?
Either is legal. As a habit, keep the two piles for each suit roughly level.
Roughly how many moves is a two-pack game?
Longer than a single-pack game. Our computer player's wins averaged about 268 moves. Take your time; there is no clock pushing you.
Is there a two-pack game with every card face up?
Yes: try FreeCell Two Decks. You will find the rest of our games on the games page and more tips on the blog.