Canfield rules

Setup & the deal

The deal happens in a fixed order. First, 13 cards are dealt face down as the reserve, with only the top card turned face up. Next, one card is dealt face up to a foundation — its rank becomes the base rank that all four foundations must start from. Then four cards are dealt face up, one to each tableau pile. The remaining 34 cards form the face-down stock, with an empty waste pile beside it.

So if the base card is the 7♦, the diamond foundation already holds its 7, and the spade, heart and club foundations are waiting for their own 7s. Every foundation then runs 7-8-9-10-J-Q-K-A-2-3-4-5-6.

Before drawing you can choose Draw 3 (the classic casino rule and our default) or Draw 1. Restart replays the identical deal, including the same base card.

Foundations & the base rank

• Each suit has its own foundation slot; a foundation only accepts its own suit.
• An empty foundation accepts exactly the base rank of its suit — nothing else.
• Foundations build up by one in suit and wrap from King to Ace: after the King comes the Ace, then 2, and so on until the pile holds 13 cards.
• Only single cards may be played to a foundation. A full foundation (13 cards) accepts nothing more — the wrap never continues past a complete suit.
• The top card of a foundation may be played back to the tableau (see the fine print), but never onto another foundation.

How to move cards

• Tableau building — the four tableau piles build down by one in alternating colors, and the sequence wraps from Ace to King: a black King may be placed on a red Ace.
• Moving runs — any face-up group that already forms a legal run (descending with wrap, alternating colors) moves as a unit. You may split a run and move only its lower portion.
• The reserve — only its top card is playable, to a foundation or onto a tableau pile. Playing it flips the next reserve card face up.
• The waste — only the top card is playable. Nothing can be placed onto the waste or the reserve.
• Empty tableau spots — while the reserve has cards, you will never see one: a freed spot refills automatically from the reserve. Once the reserve is empty, an empty pile accepts any card or run.

A worked example of the wrap: 3♠-2♥-A♣-K♦-Q♠ is a single legal tableau run — descending by one, alternating colors, crossing the Ace–King corner in the middle. Any tail of it (say K♦-Q♠) may be split off and moved on its own, provided the destination accepts the tail’s first card.

Every move works both by drag-and-drop and by tapping: tap a card and it flies to its foundation when that is legal. The input method never changes what is allowed.

The stock & redeals

Click the stock to draw one or three cards (per your mode) onto the waste; when three are drawn, the last one lands on top and is the only playable card. When the stock empties, clicking it flips the whole waste back over in its original order to form a new stock.

Redeals are unlimited in both modes, and unlike Klondike there is no recycle penalty in either mode. The waste order never changes between passes, so after one full pass you know exactly what is coming.

Draws and recycles count as moves but score nothing. In Draw 3 the cards flip one at a time, so the last of the three lands on top of the waste — playing cards out of the middle of the pass reshapes which trios surface next time around.

Scoring

The score never drops below zero. Tableau-to-tableau moves and draws score nothing — which reflects the original casino deal, where Richard Canfield paid out only for cards that reached the foundations.

Winning & auto-finish

You win when all four foundations hold 13 cards. Because of the wrap, a foundation is complete when it has come full circle back to the rank just below the base.

Expect to lose most deals: Canfield was designed as a casino game where the house kept the money, and it remains one of the lowest win-rate solitaires in the classic canon. The game tracks your games played, wins and best times, so treat a cleared reserve or a long foundation streak as real progress even when the deal beats you.

Auto-finish is offered once the stock, waste and reserve are all empty and the game can prove that repeatedly playing tableau tops to the foundations wins. Wrapped tableau runs make that non-obvious, so the game literally simulates the greedy finish before showing the button — if it appears, the win is certain.

Edge cases & fine print

• The rank one below the base is the last card each foundation needs. Burying it deep in a wrapped tableau run is the classic way to lose a won game.
• A tableau run may wrap: Q-K-A or 2-A-K are legal alternating-color sequences. Count distance from the base rank, not from the Ace.
• Because building wraps, a tableau run can legally grow longer than 13 cards: after a full lap of the ranks, the other red and black cards of each rank can keep the sequence going.
• All four foundations always share one base rank — there is never a deal where the suits start on different ranks.
• Foundation cards returned to the tableau (−15 points) can be re-played to the foundation later (+10) — a legal, sometimes necessary loop.
• In Draw 3, fewer than three cards at the end of the stock deal as a short group.
• The reserve top card is always face up; face-down reserve cards are never playable and never visible.
• Undo is unlimited; Restart re-deals the same 52-card order, so the base rank and reserve are identical on a replay.

Variants

We play the cardgames.io variant: random base rank, automatic reserve refill, foundations and tableau both wrapping, unlimited redeals, and a Draw 1 / Draw 3 toggle with Draw 3 as the classic default.

Historical Canfield (also sold as Demon in Britain) is the same game; casino play often limited redeals or paid per foundation card instead of keeping score. Related games we do not play here: Storehouse, which starts the foundations on the deuces, and Superior Canfield, where the whole reserve is visible. Klondike is the closest mainstream cousin — same building, no reserve, Ace-based foundations.

Frequently asked questions

Related rulebooks

• Solitaire rules — the classic klondike patience game
• Crescent rules — two decks, 16 piles, three lucky shuffles
• FreeCell rules — every deal is winnable — plan ahead
• Clock rules — beat the fourth king — 1-in-13 fate