Canfield Solitaire Rule Variations

Canfield has been played for well over a hundred years, and in that time people have bent the rules in every direction, mostly to give themselves a better chance. This page explains the options you can choose in the Settings of our Canfield Solitaire game, and then the best-known relatives of the game that you may have met under other names.

Our Game’s Options

Draw 3

You turn over three cards from the deck at a time, and only the top one can be played. When you play it, the card under it comes free. You may go through the deck as often as you like. This is the traditional way to play Canfield and the way our game starts. It is hard: on any one pass you see only about a third of the deck’s cards on top.

Draw 1

You turn over one card at a time, so every card in the deck comes to the top on every pass. Nothing stays hidden behind other cards. With unlimited passes this is a good deal easier than Draw 3, and it’s a friendly way to learn the game. The reserve is still the reserve, though, so plenty of deals will still beat you.

Move Part of a Column

In the traditional game, a column moves onto another column only as a whole. If a column holds a red 9, a black 8 and a red 7, all three go together or not at all.

With Move part of a column turned on, you may pick up any card in a column together with the cards on top of it, the way you would in Klondike. In the example, you could move just the red 7 onto a black 8 elsewhere, which uncovers the black 8 beneath it. This is a very common house rule and many computer versions play this way. It makes the game easier, because cards in the middle of a column are no longer locked in.

One thing stays the same: cards from the columns never move into an empty column. A space is filled from the reserve, or from the turned-up deck cards once the reserve is gone.

Auto-Move to Foundations

With this on, cards that are safe to put up go to the foundations by themselves. “Safe” means no card still in play could need to be placed on it. Cards of the starting rank and the rank after it always go up. A higher card waits until both foundations of the opposite color have reached the rank just below it. So if the piles start with 9s, a black Queen goes up by itself only after both red Jacks are up.

Turn this off if you’d rather place every card yourself. Unlike the other options, it takes effect right away, in the middle of a deal.

Statistics are kept separately for each combination of Draw 3 or Draw 1, with and without part-column moves, so an easier setting never pads your record for the traditional game.

Other Ways People Play

Limited Redeals

Some players make the game even harder by limiting the trips through the deck: three passes with Draw 3, or a single pass with Draw 1. In the old gambling-house game the house set rules like these to protect its profit. Our game always allows unlimited passes.

Filling Spaces From the Columns

Once the reserve is gone, some rule books let you fill an empty column with any available card, including one taken from another column. We follow the stricter and more common rule: a space takes the top waste card or stays open.

Taking Cards Back From the Foundations

A few players allow the top card of a foundation to come back down to a column. Traditional Canfield does not, and neither does our game.

Canfield’s Relatives

Rainbow

Played like Canfield, except that in the columns a card may go on any card one rank higher, whatever its color or suit. The deck is usually turned one card at a time. The freer building makes it easier to get reserve cards into play.

Storehouse

Also called Thirteen Up. The four 2s are taken out before the deal and placed as the foundations, so the starting rank is always 2 and the piles end with the Aces. The columns are built down in the same suit rather than in alternating colors, and the deck is turned one card at a time with a limited number of redeals.

Superior Canfield

All thirteen reserve cards are dealt face up and spread so you can see every one. You also don’t have to fill an empty column from the reserve right away; you may hold the space open. Seeing the reserve turns a game of luck into much more of a planning game, and it is won far more often.

Chameleon

A smaller, tougher cousin: twelve cards in the reserve and only three columns. The columns are built down regardless of suit, and the deck is turned one card at a time, usually with a single pass.

Double Canfield

A game for two players sitting across from each other, each with their own deck and their own layout, both playing to the same shared foundations in the middle. Whoever gets more cards out wins. Fast-paced family card games where everyone races to shared piles at once grew out of this idea.

Demon

Not a different game at all, just a different name. In Britain, the game on this page is usually called Demon, while “Canfield” there often means Klondike. If a British friend says they play Canfield, they may well mean the seven-column game.

House rules are fine. Solitaire is your own game. If the family always let you peek at the reserve or move single cards around, that’s the game you grew up with, and nobody is keeping score but you.

More Solitaire to Try

If you enjoy building in alternating colors, Klondike Solitaire is the closest cousin and is won far more often. FreeCell deals every card face up and rewards planning, and Spider Solitaire offers a longer game with two decks. For the standard rules of this game, see how to play Canfield Solitaire, and for advice, our Canfield strategy guide.