Yukon rules

Setup & the deal

Yukon uses one shuffled 52-card deck, dealt entirely onto seven tableau columns. There is no stock and no waste pile — every card is on the table from the first second, though 21 of them start hidden.

That is 21 face-down cards and 31 face-up cards. Above the tableau sit four empty foundations, one per suit, each waiting for its Ace. The deal is recorded when the cards hit the table, so the Restart button replays the exact same hand from the beginning — useful when you want another crack at a deal you fumbled.

Note what is missing from the layout: no stock, no waste, no free cells, no redeals. Yukon gives you everything up front and then asks you to earn it — the entire game is played with the moves described below and nothing else.

How to play

The signature Yukon rule: any face-up card may be picked up, and everything stacked on top of it comes along — no matter how jumbled that group is. Legality is judged by one card only: the card at the bottom of the moved group.

• Tableau moves — the bottom card of the moved group must be the opposite color and exactly one rank lower than the card it lands on. A red 7 (with any pile of cards riding on it) may land on a black 8. The cards above the moved card are ignored entirely — they can be any ranks, any suits, any order.
• The destination must be face up. You can never build onto a face-down card.
• Empty columns take Kings only — a King, or a group whose bottom card is a King. No other rank may start an empty column.
• Foundations build up in suit from Ace to King: A, 2, 3 … Q, K. Only one card at a time goes to a foundation — you cannot send a group up, even a perfectly ordered one.
• Foundation withdrawals are legal. The top card of a foundation may be moved back to a legal tableau spot if you need it as a landing pad. It cannot jump to another foundation.
• Flips are automatic — the moment the last card covering a face-down card leaves, that card turns face up. Flipping all 21 hidden cards is the real work of the game.

A worked example: column four shows, bottom to top, a face-down card, then 10♠, 3♥, J♦, 6♣. You may grab the 10♠ — the 3♥, J♦ and 6♣ all ride along — and drop the whole group on any red Jack. The three passengers stay in their jumbled order on top; the face-down card beneath flips face up; and the red Jack now carries a perfectly legal 10♠ with luggage. That kind of move, useless-looking in Klondike terms, is the bread and butter of Yukon.

Every interaction works by click or drag: drag a group to its destination, or click a card to send it somewhere sensible (single cards click straight onto their foundation when legal). The moves counter ticks up on every completed move, including foundation withdrawals.

Winning & losing

You win when all four foundations are complete — 13 cards each, Ace through King, 52 cards total. Confetti follows.

Yukon has no sudden-death loss: no timer runs out and no stock empties. A deal is lost only in the practical sense that no useful move remains — the Hint button coming up empty is the usual signal. Because nothing is hidden in a stock, most Yukon deals are winnable with careful digging; when a game does die, it is almost always because face-down cards got sealed under immovable stacks.

When every card on the table is face up and simply playing tableau tops onto the foundations would finish the game, an auto-finish option appears. The game verifies this by actually simulating the finish first — piles can be jumbled in Yukon, so it never guesses. Auto-finish then plays the lowest-ranked playable top card, over and over, until the last King lands.

Edge cases & fine print

• Group order is truly irrelevant. A group like 7♥, K♠, 2♦, 9♣ (bottom to top) moves as one unit onto a black 8 — only the 7♥ at the bottom is checked.
• Any face-up card is grabbable, however deep. You may pick up a card buried under ten face-up cards; all ten ride along.
• One flip per move, at most. Only the card directly beneath the moved group can turn over; cards deeper down stay hidden until they too are uncovered.
• Foundations accept exactly one card per move, and a foundation card can never move to another foundation — only back to the tableau.
• Kings block empty columns for everyone else. Moving a whole column away leaves a space only a King group can fill, so think before you strip a column bare.
• Hints have priorities: first any tableau top that fits a foundation; then group moves that flip a face-down card, un-bury a trapped face-up card, or vacate a column for a King. The hint never suggests pointless shuffling.
• Restart is a true replay — the original deck order is stored at deal time, so Restart reproduces the identical layout, hidden cards included. Undo steps back one move at a time, and your game auto-saves so a closed tab resumes exactly where you left it.

Variants

The rules above are classic Yukon as played on cardgames.io — jumbled group moves, opposite-color building, kings-only spaces. The family has harsher siblings:

• Russian Solitaire — identical deal and group-move freedom, but tableau builds must be same suit descending instead of alternating colors. Dramatically harder; win rates collapse.
• Alaska — Russian Solitaire where tableau builds may go up or down in suit. A little friendlier than Russian, still tougher than Yukon.
• Double Yukon — two decks, ten columns, same move rules; a longer haul rather than a harder puzzle.

We play standard single-deck Yukon only. If you want the alternating-color logic with a stock and redeals, that is simply Klondike — our Solitaire page has it.

Frequently asked questions

Related rulebooks

• Solitaire rules — the classic klondike patience game
• Scorpion rules — same-suit moves with a sting in the tail
• Spider rules — two decks, eight runs — 1, 2 or 4 suits
• FreeCell rules — every deal is winnable — plan ahead