Baker's Solitaire: FreeCell's tough older sibling, tested

Baker's Solitaire, often called Baker's Game, uses the same layout as FreeCell: 52 cards face up in eight columns, four free cells, and four foundations. The difference is in how you build. Here cards go down in the same suit, not alternating colours, and on this site only a King can fill an empty column.

Those two rules make an enormous difference. Our solver worked through 10,000 deals to the very end and found that only 31.8% can be won under this site's rules. Every other deal was proven impossible. Compare that with FreeCell, where 99.68% of our deals were solved.

So if you're losing most of your Baker's games, you're in good company. About two deals in three can't be won by anyone. The skill is in winning the third one.

At a glance: Baker's Solitaire in numbers

Our classic-rule result (76.0%) matches the published 75.05% closely, which gives us confidence that the solver is right about this site's harder version too.

Why this site's version is so much harder

Most descriptions of Baker's Game let any card move into an empty column. The game on this site follows a stricter rule in its code: only a King can go there. Also, empty columns don't count towards how many cards you can move at once; only free cells do.

Changing the empty-column rule took the winnable share from 76.0% to 31.8% in our tests. It is one of the biggest effects of a single rule anywhere in our study. An empty column in classic Baker's is a flexible parking bay. Here it is a King's garage and nothing else.

Rules of Baker's Solitaire on this site

• Eight columns dealt face up: four of seven cards, four of six.
• Four free cells, each holding one card.
• Four foundations, built up by suit from Ace to King.
• Build down the columns in the same suit: 8 of hearts on 9 of hearts, never on the 9 of spades.
• An empty column accepts only a King, or a same-suit run headed by a King.
• You can move a run of cards at once if you have enough empty free cells: one more card than the number of empty cells. Empty columns do not add to this.

Strategy for a game you'll lose two times in three

Decide quickly whether a deal is worth the fight

With 68.2% of deals impossible, a lot of hard thinking is spent on lost causes. Look first at where the Kings are. Deep, low cards trapped under Kings of other suits, with no way to open a column, are a strong warning sign. If you're stuck early with every cell full, restarting isn't giving up; it's playing the odds.

Hunt Kings, not gaps

Because only a King can use an empty column, emptying one is only useful if a King is ready to move in. Ideally that King should be sitting on top of cards you need. Plan the pair: which column you'll empty, and which King goes there.

Same-suit building means fewer options

In FreeCell a red 7 has two possible homes (either black 8). In Baker's it has exactly one: the 8 of its own suit. That means fewer legal moves at every turn, and it's why cells fill up so quickly. Count your moves before committing a card to a cell.

Half the time you'll open without an Ace

Only 49.7% of deals give you an Ace on the first move. Where none is available, identify the Ace with the fewest cards on top and plan how many cells you need to dig it out. Spending three cells to free one Ace early is usually a bad trade.

Winning games are short

The solutions our solver found averaged about 39 moves. Winnable Baker's deals tend to open up and then run home quickly. If you are far past that and still juggling cards between cells, it may be worth asking whether this is one of the impossible two-thirds.

Reading a deal: what to look for in the first minute

Because nothing is hidden, you can learn a lot before making a single move. With two deals in three impossible, a quick first look saves real time. Here is the checklist we use.

• Where are the four Aces? Count the cards sitting on top of each one. If one Ace sits under five or six cards of mixed suits, you'll need several cells to reach it.
• Where are the Kings? A King at the bottom of a column (dealt first) is harmless: it's already where it would go. A King sitting on top of low cards in the same column is a problem that only an empty column can solve.
• Which column is shortest? The four six-card columns are your likely first gaps. Check whether the cards in them have somewhere to go in their own suit.
• Are there ready-made runs? Two or three cards of the same suit already in order (say 9, 8, 7 of clubs) are a gift. They move as a unit with enough free cells and give you a head start on the foundations.

None of this guarantees a win; a deal that looks good can still be one of the impossible 68.2%. But in a game this tight, a minute of looking usually tells you where the first four or five moves should go, and whether a column can ever be opened for a King.

Playing here

Baker's Solitaire on free-solitaire.nz is free, with nothing to download, no sign-up, no account and no email. It runs in any modern browser, whether you're at your desk or on the couch on a cold Dunedin evening.

• Large, clear cards and a zoom control.
• Hint, unlimited Undo and Restart, which are especially useful in a game this unforgiving.
• Auto Play once the game is won.
• Drag and drop, or tap to move.
• Wins, time and moves tracked for your current game.
• Sound off, fullscreen mode and table colours.

How we did the research, step by step

The free-solitaire.nz team ran this study in September 2026. Baker’s Solitaire is played in different ways on different sites, so we measured the exact version on this page.

1. Reading the rules from this site’s own game code. It is dealt like FreeCell (eight face-up columns and four free cells), but you build down in suit, and only a King may fill an empty column. Empty columns also do not help you move several cards at once. The classic Baker’s Game in the books lets any card fill an empty column, so this site’s version is stricter.
2. Rebuilding the game as a program. We rewrote the game in Python with the site’s rules, plus a second version with the classic rule so we could compare the two.
3. Dealing the cards. Deals 1 to 10,000 for this site’s rules and deals 1 to 2,000 for the classic rule, each from a numbered seed.
4. Choosing the player. All cards are face up, so we used a solver that explores the most promising position first, with up to 200,000 positions per deal. On every single deal the search either found a win or ran out of moves completely, so each answer is exact: winnable or not.
5. Running it. Under this site’s rules 31.8% of deals can be won and 68.2% cannot. Under the classic rule the same solver found 76.0%.
6. Checking the solver twice. We re-checked deals 1 to 5 with a separate brute-force program, and it agreed on every one.
7. Checking against published research. Blake & Gent, Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research, 2026 put the classic game at 75.053%. Our classic-rule result of 76.0% agrees, which tells us the solver is sound, and that the lower figure on this page really comes from the Kings-only rule.
8. Working out the margin of error. A “95% range” is the band the true figure falls inside 95 times out of 100 if you ran the same test again on fresh deals. For this site’s rules, 31.8% came with a range of 30.9–32.8%.
9. What the numbers cannot tell you. These figures say how many deals can be won with perfect play. They do not say how often people win, which will be lower.

Every deal is seeded, so the whole test can be repeated exactly.

The technical side

Baker's Solitaire is played by freecell.py, the same Python 3.11 module as FreeCell, switched to Baker's rules: builds in suit, and only a King may fill an empty column. There are no outside libraries. A shared runner.py runs 19 deals at a time in parallel with Python's multiprocessing, and each deal is shuffled from a numbered seed.

• The solver is a best-first search that always looks at the most promising position next and keeps a table of every position already seen. Under this site's Kings-only rule the search ran to the end on every deal, so each of the 10,000 deals was either solved or proven impossible, with nothing left undecided. That run took about 16 minutes.
• The classic-rule comparison (any card into an empty column) used the same solver on 2,000 deals and took about 3 minutes.
• The 95% range is a Wilson score interval, the usual formula for error bars on a percentage.

To make sure "impossible" really meant impossible, a separate brute-force program re-tested seeds 1 to 5 and agreed with the solver on each. Matching the published classic figure is a second check. Code and page were written with help from an AI assistant, Claude (made by Anthropic). The AI did not produce the numbers: they come from running the code, and the team compared them with published research before publishing.

By Admin, free-solitaire.nz. Study date: 18 September 2026.

Frequently asked questions

What percentage of Baker's Solitaire games can be won?

Under this site's rules, 31.8% of the 10,000 deals we tested. Under the classic rule, where any card may fill an empty column, it's about 75–76%.

What's the difference between Baker's Solitaire and FreeCell?

Baker's builds in the same suit instead of alternating colours, and here only Kings may fill an empty column. FreeCell is winnable almost every time; Baker's, as played here, about one time in three.

Is it worth restarting a deal?

Often, yes. Two deals in three are impossible, so if you're stuck early with no route to open a column for a King, a fresh deal is a reasonable choice.

Why only Kings in empty columns?

That's how the game is set up on this site, and it's what makes it such a demanding test. We explain the effect above: it cuts the winnable share by more than half.

What else can I play?

For a two-deck game, try Spider Solitaire, or return to classic Klondike. Everything is on the games page, and more findings are on the blog.