Canfield Solitaire
Quick Pitch
Canfield is a challenging solo card game where you build four foundation piles from a starting rank, with a reserve pile adding extra tactical options — and only about a 1-in-5 chance of winning.
Hook
Canfield is the solitaire game that keeps you humble. Unlike Klondike where a win feels achievable, Canfield wins are genuinely rare — which makes every successful game feel like a real accomplishment. If you've mastered Klondike and want something tougher, this is your next challenge.
Equipment Needed
One standard 52-card deck and a clear surface with room to spread out cards. No other materials needed.
Setup
- Shuffle the deck well.
- Count out 13 cards and place them face-down in a pile to your left — this is your Reserve.
- Flip the top card of the Reserve face-up so you can see it.
- Deal one card face-up to start your Foundation — this is the base card, and all four foundations will start from this same rank. If you dealt a 7, for example, all four foundations will build from 7.
- Deal four more cards face-up in a row to the right of the Reserve — these form your four Tableau columns.
- The remaining cards in your hand form the Stock.
Rules
Objective
Move all 52 cards onto the four foundation piles, building each one up by suit from the starting rank all the way through the deck (wrapping from King back to Ace if needed). Get all 52 cards onto foundations to win.
The Tableau
The four tableau columns are where you do most of your maneuvering. You can build on them in descending rank and alternating colors — so a red 9 can go on a black 10, a black 8 can go on a red 9, and so on. You can move single cards or entire sequences together.
If a tableau column becomes empty, it must be filled immediately with the top card from the Reserve pile. Once the Reserve is exhausted, you can use any card you wish to fill empty columns.
The Reserve
The Reserve pile sits face-down with only the top card visible. You can play the top Reserve card to the foundations or tableau at any time. When you play the top card, flip the next one face-up. You can't dig into the Reserve freely — only the top card is accessible.
The Stock
Flip cards from the Stock three at a time onto a face-up Waste pile. Only the top card of the Waste pile is playable. When you reach the end of the Stock, flip the entire Waste pile over and go through it again. You can do this as many times as you need — there's no limit on redeals.
Winning
Move every card to the four foundation piles. Because of the unusual starting rank and the restricted access to the Reserve, Canfield is won in only about 20% of games even with good play.
Expert Player
Tips
Prioritize the Reserve. The Reserve is your most restricted resource — you can only access the top card at any time, and you have no control over what comes up next. Whenever you have a chance to play a Reserve card to a foundation or tableau, do it, because that frees up the next card.
Don't fill empty columns carelessly. Empty tableau columns are valuable because you can fill them strategically with Reserve cards when good ones come up. Resist the urge to immediately dump a stock card into an empty slot — wait and see if a Reserve card becomes playable into it first.
Plan your sequences around the starting rank. Because foundations wrap around (King → Ace → 2 if the foundation starts at 2), you may need to build tableau sequences through the wrap point. Keep this in mind when deciding which cards to stack together.
Use the Stock pass to scout. On your first pass through the Stock, focus on learning which cards are where. On subsequent passes, you can play more strategically because you have a mental picture of what's coming.
Variations
- Single-card Stock: Deal one card at a time from the Stock instead of three, making the game easier since you have more control over what becomes available.
- Storehouse (Canfield variant): Remove all four 2s and place them as foundation bases before dealing. This gives you a fixed starting rank and slightly more predictable play.
- Demon: The British name for Canfield, played with identical rules.
Learn More — History & Origins
History & Origins
Canfield's origin story is more colorful than most solitaire games. According to tradition, the game was invented by — or at least named after — Richard A. Canfield, a notorious American gambler and casino operator who ran establishments in Saratoga Springs, New York, and New York City in the late 19th century. The story goes that Canfield would sell players a deck of cards for 50 dollars, then pay them back 5 dollars for every card they successfully moved to the foundations at game's end. Since only about 20% of games are winnable at all, and fully won games are even rarer with the pay structure involved, the house had a strong mathematical edge — making Canfield both a solitaire game and a casino game simultaneously.
Whether the story is entirely true is uncertain — the game may have existed before Canfield and merely been associated with his name because of the gambling version. In Britain, the same game is called Demon, with no connection to any historical figure. The game is also sometimes confused with Klondike, which is the most widely known solitaire in the world (and the one preinstalled on Windows computers under the name "Solitaire").
Cultural Context
Canfield occupies a niche in solitaire culture as the game for people who've grown bored with Klondike's relative accessibility. Its low win rate — roughly one in five games, even with good play — makes winning genuinely memorable. Among dedicated solitaire enthusiasts, Canfield is respected as a skill-testing variant where decision-making matters but luck still plays a major role, creating the exact kind of tension that makes solitaire compelling.
The game is part of a broader family of "building" solitaires that ask players to work toward a fixed goal (moving cards to foundations) through careful sequencing and patience. This family includes FreeCell, Spider Solitaire, and dozens of lesser-known variants, all of which reward systematic thinking over random card shuffling.