Easthaven Solitaire

How to Play Easthaven

Easthaven will feel familiar if you play Klondike: columns build down in alternating colors, and foundations build up from the Aces. The difference is the stock.

Rather than turning cards onto a waste pile, each click of the stock deals a card onto every column. That can cover the very cards you were working toward, so the question is always when to deal.

Setup

Twenty-one cards are dealt into seven columns of three, with only the bottom card of each face up. The other 31 cards form the stock, and the four foundations start empty.

Rules

• Foundations build up in suit from Ace to King.
• Columns build down by one rank in alternating colors.
• A face-up card can move with a properly built run on top of it.
• Any card or run can move to an empty column.
• A face-down card turns over as soon as it is uncovered.
• Click the stock to deal one card onto each column. You can deal at any time, even with empty columns.
• The stock lasts for four full deals, and the last three cards go on the first three columns.

How to win

Move all 52 cards to the foundations. Once the stock is gone and every card is face up, autocomplete can finish the game when the rest go up in order.

How often can Easthaven be won?

We ran our own solver on 200 shuffled deals of this version. It found a win in 39 of 200 (20%), showed that 8 could not be won, and ran out of its budget of 20,000 positions a deal on 153.

Those undecided deals may still be winnable, so treat the win count as a minimum. The solver can see every card, including face-down ones, so it measures what the cards allow, not how often a person will win.

Easthaven Strategy

• Use the board fully before dealing, because a deal covers the bottom of every column.
• Fill empty columns before you deal if the move helps, since a deal fills them with whatever comes next, and that card may not be what you wanted there.
• Anything can go in an empty column here, so use it for a run that uncovers a face-down card, not just to park a King.
• Do not rush cards to the foundations. A low card there can no longer hold a run together on the board.
• Deal only when you have got what you can from the current position, then look over every column again, because one new card can open several moves.

More Solitaire Games

Love Easthaven? Try these other solitaire variants on Solitaire Scramble:

Easthaven FAQ