Strategy guide · Yukon family

Russian Solitaire

Take Yukon — where whole messy stacks move at once — then demand that every build follow suit. The result is one of the hardest one-deck games in the canon, and its wins are trophies.

The deal

Seven columns, like Klondike — but there's no stock. Column one gets a single face-up card. Columns two through seven get 1 to 6 face-down cards each, then five face-up cards on top. All 52 cards are on the table; 21 begin hidden.

The rules

• Goal: build the four foundations up in suit from Ace to King.
• The Yukon move: any face-up card may be picked up along with every card on top of it, in any order, and moved as a group.
• The Russian catch: the moving card must land on a card of the same suit, one rank higher. The 8♦ moves only onto the 9♦.
• Empty columns accept only Kings (with whatever rides on top of them).
• Face-down cards flip when uncovered. There is no stock and no redeal.

Six ways to win more often

1. Face-down cards are the only clock. Nothing else in the game matters as much as flipping the 21 hidden cards, because any of them could be the Ace or 2 the whole game hinges on. When choosing between moves, count face-down flips first, elegance second.
2. Dig the deep columns early. The right-hand columns hide up to six cards, and each flip there is rarer and more valuable. A move that uncovers a card in column seven usually beats a prettier move on the shallow side.
3. Carry your rubble deliberately. Because groups move regardless of order, the junk riding on a card travels with it — meaning you can relocate an entire mess to expose what's beneath. Ask where the rubble hurts least, not where the move looks cleanest.
4. The same-suit rule cuts both ways. With only one 9♦ in the deck, the 8♦ has exactly one home outside the foundations. If that 9♦ is itself buried under cards you can't move, the 8♦ is frozen. Trace these single-path dependencies before committing — chains of them are how Russian deals die.
5. Vet your Kings before granting them land. An empty column is precious and only a King can take it. Prefer the King whose Queen — same suit, remember — is reachable, and whose column-clearing freed useful cards. A dead-end King in your only empty column can end the game on the spot.
6. Accept the odds, then beat them. Even strong players lose most deals; win rates in the single digits to low teens are normal. Track your rate over dozens of games, not one session — steady improvement is the real victory in Russian Solitaire.

Why play it in Full Deck Solitaire

Russian Solitaire sits next to its gentler sibling Yukon and its cousin Chinese Solitaire in the Full Deck Solitaire library, making it easy to train up the family tree. Per-game statistics are practically mandatory for a game this hard — watching a 4% win rate become 9% is the whole sport — and the three-level hint system will confirm whether a stuck position has any life left before you concede.