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Solitaire Scoring: Klondike, Vegas and the Draw Three Rule

Solitaire, or Patience, is the card game most people have played the most times and understood the least. Almost nobody who plays it daily could say what their score means, because most versions either hide the scoring or invent their own.

Here is what the two real scoring systems actually are, what the draw rule changes, and how Braggster scores a deal.

The layout, briefly

Klondike deals 28 cards into seven tableau piles of ascending size, the top card of each face up. The remaining 24 cards form the stock. Four foundations get built up by suit from ace to king, the tableau gets built down in alternating colours, and only a king can move into an empty column.

Win the deal by getting all 52 cards onto the foundations.

Standard scoring

The classic system awards points for progress:

Under this system a completed game scores well above 500, and the number rewards efficiency: the fewer times you shuffle cards between foundations and tableau, the higher you finish.

Vegas scoring

Vegas scoring counts differently. You are scored purely on cards reaching the foundations, and the number is small: one point per card, so a perfect deal is 52.

The two systems answer different questions. Standard asks "how well did you play this deal". Vegas asks "how much of the deal did you actually clear". Vegas is the one worth tracking across many games, because it is comparable between deals in a way a progress score is not.

Braggster offers both.

Draw one versus draw three

This is the rule that decides how hard Solitaire is, and it is not close.

Klondike draw one turns one card at a time and allows unlimited passes through the stock. Roughly speaking, most deals are winnable, and losing usually means you played it wrong.

Klondike draw three turns three at a time, so you only ever see every third card unless the pile length shifts, and Braggster's version allows three passes. The win rate drops sharply. A deal you lose at draw three is frequently a deal that was never winnable.

If you are comparing your record against somebody else's, the draw rule matters more than the scoring system does.

Playing Klondike in the app

Braggster's Solitaire has a full tap to move Klondike board. Tap a card, tap where it goes, and the finished deal scores through the same round path as a hand entered result. Cards on the foundations are what get recorded.

The board follows whichever variant your match is set to:

The three variants without a board of their own are still scored: you play them with real cards, or elsewhere, and record the result. They are on the list because people do play them, not as placeholders.

Like Blackjack and the Freestyle table, the dealt cards are ephemeral. Only the score persists, which is the right trade for a game you play twenty times an evening.

Solitaire as a tracked game

The unusual thing about putting Solitaire in a score keeping app is that it makes your solo play comparable over time. Most Solitaire apps show you a streak and forget everything else. Here the deal lands in the same statistics as every other game, so "how am I doing at Solitaire" has an answer with a number in it.

Frequently asked questions

What is a good Solitaire score? Under Vegas scoring, 52 is a perfect deal and anything above about 30 is a strong partial clear. Under standard scoring a completed deal typically finishes well above 500.

Is draw three harder than draw one? Considerably. Draw one with unlimited passes lets you see every card in the stock. Draw three restricts which cards you can reach, and Braggster caps the passes at three.

Can I play Solitaire offline? Yes. The whole board runs on the device with no connection and no account.

Does the app have Spider and FreeCell boards? Not yet. Those variants are scored by hand. The playable board covers Klondike draw one and draw three.

Are there ads between deals? No. There are no ads anywhere in Braggster.

More: browse every card game at braggster.com/games, or read the overview of card game scoring.