SolitaireGames Week
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 400 solitaire card games in Pretty Good Solitaire. Pretty Good Solitaire contains 17 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 See the rules of the game FreeCell Statistics See the FreeCell statistics of Pretty Good Solitaire players. FreeCell is the most played game in Pretty Good Solitaire. FreeCell information site Links to the FreeCell FAQ, catalog of links, computer solitaire games, and places to play FreeCell online. Play FreeCell Online! Play for free or win prizes! 
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