Alaska Solitaire: what 10,500 simulated deals tell us
Alaska Solitaire looks like Klondike's tougher cousin and plays like a puzzle. There is no stock pile to rescue you: every card is on the table from the first second, and some of it is hidden face down. What makes Alaska different from its close relative Yukon is one rule — you build in the same suit, and you may go up or down by one rank.
Rather than simply repeat the rules, we wanted to know how winnable Alaska really is on this site. So we wrote a computer solver and a playing bot, dealt thousands of games under the exact rules our version uses, and counted the results. The short answer: at least 75.6% of Alaska deals can be won, but very few of them are easy.
Alaska at a glance
| What we measured | Result | Deals |
|---|---|---|
| Deals our solver proved winnable | 75.6% (95% range 71.6–79.2%) | 500 |
| Deals proven impossible | 7.2% | 500 |
| Deals left undecided when the search budget ran out | 17.2% | 500 |
| Aces that start face down, on average (of 4) | 1.61 | 10,000 |
| Win rate of our simple no-peek bot | 1.5% | 10,000 |
Put simply: somewhere between roughly three in four and nine in ten Alaska deals can be beaten with perfect play. Only about one in fourteen is genuinely hopeless. The bot's tiny figure says far more about our bot than about the game — more on that below.
How to play Alaska Solitaire
The layout
A single 52-card pack is dealt into seven tableau columns. The first column holds one card. The other six hold 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11 cards, and in each of those the last five cards are face up while the rest are face down. There is no stock and no waste pile — what you see (and what is hidden underneath) is everything you get.
The goal
Move all 52 cards to the four foundations, building each one up by suit from Ace to King.
How cards move
- Same suit, one rank up or down. A 7 of hearts can go on the 8 of hearts or the 6 of hearts. That two-way building is the heart of Alaska.
- Move any face-up card, with everything on top of it. The cards above do not need to be in order. This is the Yukon rule, and it is what makes digging possible.
- Only a King (with whatever sits on it) may go into an empty column.
- When a face-down card is uncovered, it turns face up.
Why Alaska is harder than it looks
With no stock, every hidden card is locked behind the cards on top of it. Our deal inspection found that, on average, 1.61 of the four Aces start face down. Those buried Aces are what decide most games: until they surface, the foundations cannot move, and every column you build is simply parking space.
The same-suit rule cuts both ways. Being allowed to build up or down gives you twice the landing spots of a normal game, but insisting on the same suit means each card has only two possible homes in the whole tableau — the card one rank above and the card one rank below, in its own suit. If both are buried, the card is stuck.
Strategy that follows from the numbers
1. Hunt the hidden cards first
The largest column hides six face-down cards. Your early moves should be aimed at uncovering cards, not at making tidy runs. A move that turns over a face-down card is almost always worth more than one that just rearranges face-up cards.
2. Use the "any face-up card" rule to dig
Because you can lift a face-up card with everything above it, you can shift a whole messy stack out of the way in one move. Look for a card deep in a column that has a same-suit neighbour elsewhere — moving it can expose a hidden card underneath.
3. Plan for Kings before you empty a column
An empty column only accepts a King. Before you clear one, check that a King (ideally one sitting on top of useful cards) is ready to move into it. An empty column with no King to fill it is wasted.
4. Keep both directions open
If you place the 6 of spades on the 7 of spades, you have also closed the 7's "down" slot. Try to leave each card with a neighbour it can still use. Building long single-suit runs in both directions tends to trap the middle cards.
5. Undo is your friend
Alaska is a deep game: a choice made on move five can decide the game forty moves later. With unlimited Undo on this site, the practical approach is to try a line, see what it uncovers, and step back if it goes nowhere. That is also, roughly, what our solver does — only much faster.
Playing Alaska on free-solitaire.nz
Our version is free, and there is nothing to download, install or sign up for — no account and no email address. It runs in any modern browser on a computer, tablet or phone.
- Large, clear cards and readable text, with a zoom control for a bigger board.
- Hint, unlimited Undo and Restart.
- Auto Play to send the cards home once the game is solved.
- Drag and drop, or tap a card and then its destination.
- Wins, time and moves tracked for the current game; sound can be switched off; fullscreen and table colours available.
There is no gambling and nothing to buy. Whether you are playing on the ferry across to Waiheke or winding down after a long day, the game waits for you — there is no timer hurrying you along.
How we did the research, step by step
The free-solitaire.nz team ran this study in September 2026. These are the steps we took, in order.
- Read the rules from our own game. From this site's game code: the same deal as Yukon (columns of 1, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11 cards, last five face up), no stock, any face-up card moving with the cards on top of it, building in the same suit one rank up or down, and only Kings into empty columns.
- Rebuilt the game in code. We wrote a program that deals and plays Alaska by exactly those rules.
- Generated numbered deals. Every deal comes from a fixed seed, so every figure can be reproduced.
- Ran a solver that can see every card. A “thoughtful” depth-first search, allowed up to 50,000 positions per deal, on 500 deals. Seeing the hidden cards makes it an upper limit no person can quite reach.
- Sorted every deal into three groups. Solved: 75.6% (95% range 71.6–79.2%). Proven impossible: 7.2%. Undecided when the budget ran out: 17.2%. The true winnable share therefore lies between 75.6% and 92.8%.
- Ran a bot that only sees what you see. It looks up to 300 positions ahead on face-up cards and never undoes. It played 10,000 deals.
- Counted what the bot did. It won 1.5% (95% range 1.3–1.8%) and got about 5 cards home per game on average. We are open about this: our Alaska bot is weak. Treat its figure as a floor, not as how often people win.
- Looked for outside figures. As far as we know there is no published winnability figure for Alaska, so these numbers are new. For comparison, see the solver results on our Yukon page.
What this means: the solver shows the most any player could win, and the bot shows the least a careful player should manage. A patient player using Undo sits somewhere in between. Ranges are 95% confidence intervals.
The technical side
Alaska is simulated in Python 3.11 using only the standard library, in yukon.py, which shares its dealing and group moves with Yukon and switches the building rule to same suit, up or down. A shared runner.py uses Python's multiprocessing to play 19 deals at once, each shuffled from a numbered seed.
- The bot searches up to 300 positions ahead per turn on visible cards only, skipping positions it has already seen. The 10,000 deals took a little over a minute.
- The solver sees every card, searches depth-first with a record of visited positions, and stops at 50,000 positions per deal. Unlike the Yukon solver it makes no automatic moves at all. The 500 deals took about 3½ minutes.
- The 95% range is a Wilson score interval, the standard error bar for a percentage.
With no automatic moves the solver takes no shortcuts, so an exhausted search is a straightforward proof of an impossible deal. Claude, an AI assistant made by Anthropic, helped write and review the code and draft this page. It did not generate any results: every figure comes from running the code, and the team checked the output against published research.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between Alaska and Yukon Solitaire?
The deal and the digging are identical. The difference is building: Yukon builds down in alternating colours, while Alaska builds in the same suit, either up or down. That makes Alaska more restrictive about which cards connect, but more flexible about direction. Try both and see which suits you — Yukon is here.
Can every Alaska game be won?
No. Our solver proved 7.2% of deals impossible even with full knowledge of the hidden cards. But at least 75.6% can be won, so most losses come down to the order of play.
Why does the bot win so rarely if most deals are winnable?
Because the bot cannot see face-down cards, cannot undo, and only thinks a short way ahead. Alaska punishes short-sighted play more than most games, which is exactly why careful human play with Undo does much better.
Is Alaska harder than Klondike?
It feels harder, because there is no stock to fall back on. If you want a gentler game, try classic Klondike or the quick-fire Golf Solitaire.
Do I need an account to play?
No. Open the page and the cards are dealt. Nothing to install and no sign-up.
Where can I find more games?
Browse the full list on our games page, or read more tips and research on the blog. If you enjoy two-directional building, Diplomat and Baker's Solitaire are good next steps.