FreeCell

FreeCell is the most popular solitaire game. An extremely strategic game, virtually every FreeCell position can be won.

FreeCell is a very young solitaire game. It was invented only around 20 years ago by Paul Allfile for the PLATO educational computer system. It was the first major solitaire game invented specifically for play on computers. It is a simple variation of Baker's Game and is related to an older, classic game called Eight Off.

FreeCell begins by dealing out all 52 cards into 8 tableau piles. The first 4 piles will have 7 cards, the last 4 only 6 cards. All the cards are face up, which makes FreeCell an open game. Open solitaire games are usually the most interesting and give the most opportunity for skillful play and FreeCell is no exception.

The object of FreeCell is to build 4 foundation piles up in suit from Aces to Kings. In addition to the foundations and tableau, there are 4 cells. Each cell is a storage place for one card. Any available card can be moved to an empty cell, and cards in the cells can be moved either back to the tableau or to the foundations.

In Baker's Game, the tableau piles are built down by suit. This makes for a challenging game. FreeCell allows building in the tableau down by alternate color, which makes for a better, more balanced game. Moving groups of cards is not strictly allowed in FreeCell. However, most computer implementations of the game allow for moving groups of cards as a shortcut. If you have all 4 cells empty, for example, it would be possible to move a group of 5 cards in sequence down by alternate color by moving the top 4 cards to the cells, then moving the 5th card, then moving the 4 cards back from the cells to reform the group. Since this is a rather laborious process, most FreeCell games allow you to simply move all 5 cards together at once. The effect of this is that the number of empty cells determines how many cards you can move as a group. It is very important to try to keep the cells as empty as possible so that you can move more cards around in the tableau. Another effect is that clearing a tableau pile also greatly increases the number of cards you can move as a group, since the empty pile can be used not only to store one card, but an entire group of cards.

FreeCell can be won very nearly every time. Only a very few FreeCell positions are impossible to win. The best known impossible position is #11982 in the Microsoft version of FreeCell that comes with Windows. This position is the only one of the regular 32000 positions in that game that is impossible to solve. Pretty Good Solitaire uses a different game numbering system. No impossible positions have yet been found among its over 2 billion starting positions, but it is very likely that there are some.

There is a great deal of information about FreeCell available on the internet. The FreeCell information site has a collection of the best FreeCell links, including links to Michael Keller's FreeCell FAQ and catalog of solutions, which is the most comprehensive site about FreeCell.

FreeCell is one of the 600 solitaire card games in Pretty Good Solitaire. Pretty Good Solitaire contains 35 games of the FreeCell type, including the very closely related games Eight Off and Baker's Game, and the 2 deck game Double FreeCell. FreeCell is also one of the 16 games in FreeCell Wizard.

Rules to FreeCell
FreeCell Statistics of Pretty Good Solitaire Players
Play FreeCell Online

Comments

[Annika]

Free cell wasn't invented 20 years ago. It was adapted.
I played this game (with no name) much longer ago than that! Same rules. I really liked it, and enjoyed Windows
Free Cell for a while, till I got tired of it. Then I found Pretty Good Sol, with its wonderful variety of games new to me, and now, my favorite, Action Solitaire!

[Thomas Warfield]

The exact form of the game is believed to have been invented by Allfile in the early 80s. However, there were very similar games in existence before then. Of course, Baker's Game http://www.goodsol.com/pgshelp/bakers_game.htm is the clear ancestor of FreeCell. Also, ForeCell http://www.goodsol.com/pgshelp/forecell.htm
dates back to a 1945 book. Both are very similar games but not quite the same thing.

[Adam Wheeler]

I think I found an impossible game. I've tried for almost 3 weeks to solve game number 26576 on the Windows XP version of Free Cell. Then again, if it IS possible, i'd like to know HOW to solve it.