# Is every game of solitaire winnable?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-every-game-of-solitaire-winnable/194150
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [August 10, 2003, 4:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-every-game-of-solitaire-winnable/194150 "2003-08-10T04:39:43Z")
**Posts on this page:** 8
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Qwertyasdfg](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qwertyasdfg)
#### Post date: [August 10, 2003, 4:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-every-game-of-solitaire-winnable/194150/1 "2003-08-10T04:39:43Z")
At first, or can the cards be shuffled so that one could never win no matter what they did?
And is it possible to mess up so badly one cannot win?
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### Author:  [@Qadgop\_the\_Mercotan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qadgop_the_Mercotan)
#### Post date: [August 10, 2003, 4:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-every-game-of-solitaire-winnable/194150/2 "2003-08-10T04:55:16Z")
Which type of solitaire?
It is my understanding that in virtually all types of solitaire played regularly, some hands cannot be won, and that many winnable hands are lost because they are not played properly. I have no cite for this, but recall reading it in a games theory article once.
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### Author:  [@Swede\_Hollow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Swede_Hollow)
#### Post date: [August 10, 2003, 5:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-every-game-of-solitaire-winnable/194150/3 "2003-08-10T05:04:01Z")
Regular solitaire (like the Windows Solitaire) can be unwinable. I have had all red cards to build off of and only red cards coming up on the deal (both with real cards and on the computer).
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### Author:  [@Achernar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Achernar)
#### Post date: [August 10, 2003, 5:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-every-game-of-solitaire-winnable/194150/4 "2003-08-10T05:07:23Z")
Freecell has at least one non-winnable game, but something like 99.99% of the games are winnable.
I imagine it wouldn’t be hard at all to construct a game of Klondike that’s not winnable. You have seven cards showing on the stacks, plus 24 in the draw deck, of which you can see eight if you don’t play any. So that’s 7 + 8 = 15 available. Just make sure that all 15 of these cards are non-Ace black cards, and you won’t have any legal moves, ever. Since there are 24 non-Ace blacks, it’s pretty easy. This will happen about once every 3.4 million games. Since the same is true of reds, at least one in 1.7 million games of Klondike is non-winnable. It’s even happened to **Swede Hollow** , apparently.
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### Author:  [@mangeorge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mangeorge)
#### Post date: [August 10, 2003, 5:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-every-game-of-solitaire-winnable/194150/5 "2003-08-10T05:11:24Z")
Regular old solitaire has many unwinnable deals, I’ve read. Also. 🙂
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### Author:  [@Garnet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Garnet)
#### Post date: [August 10, 2003, 5:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-every-game-of-solitaire-winnable/194150/6 "2003-08-10T05:12:55Z")
I’m assuming you mean “regular” solitaire like the one that comes with Windows… consider this layout:
The cards on top of each pile are the 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, and Q of clubs and 2 of spades. Then there are 1+2+3+4+5+6 = 21 cards underneath those in the piles. Put all the odd red cards, of which there are 14, down there, plus the two black aces, plus anything else. Then all that’s left for you to draw from are even red cards and assorted black cards, and no aces, so you can’t make a move at all… at least I think.
Upon preview: Freecell does indeed have at least two non-winnable games; try selecting game # -1 or -2.
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### Author:  [@Desmostylus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Desmostylus)
#### Post date: [August 10, 2003, 5:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-every-game-of-solitaire-winnable/194150/7 "2003-08-10T05:24:01Z")
[FreeCell – Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)](http://home.earthlink.net/~fomalhaut/fcfaq.html)
> [@](#):
>
> 1. The Microsoft 32,000
>
> - Can they all be solved?
>
> All of the 32,000 Microsoft deals except for number 11982 are solvable.
>
> Jim Horne’s version for Windows 3.1 contained 32,000 numbered deals (games), so that selecting a specific number would always produce the same deal. (These are random deals, generated by integer seeds using the random number generator in the Microsoft C compiler). He numbered the deals so that people could exchange the numbers of difficult/interesting games with their friends, and also in the belief that some people would try to play sequentially through the games; many people have in fact done so. Happily, when the game was ported to Windows 95 and later operating systems, the set of 32,000 deals was the same, so any discussion of deal numbers applies to all Microsoft versions. The help file for Microsoft FreeCell contains the claim “It is believed (though not proven) that every game is winnable.” When Horne wrote this, he already knew that unsolvable deals could be constructed (see Hans Bodlaender’s example): as a joke, the Windows 95 version includes two unsolvable games, numbered -1 and -2. Horne purposely made his claim ambiguous in order to challenge people to find such impossible games, but intending it to mean that all of the 32,000 included deals were winnable. This comes as close as possible to being true…
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### Author:  [@Jon\_the\_Geek](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jon_the_Geek)
#### Post date: [August 10, 2003, 5:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-every-game-of-solitaire-winnable/194150/8 "2003-08-10T05:52:02Z")
Hehehe, thanks for the info, **Desmostylus**. I actually played the first 2k or so games of Windows Freecell to try to find an unwinnable game (without doing any checking to see if anyone had already found any). Well, that and I am an enormous geek. I still have the piece of paper around here somewhere where I’d write down the game number I ended on.
Hey, it got boring at Michigan Tech sometimes. When my friends and I were sitting around drinking and talking, I’d be cycling through Freecell games.
Did I mention that I’m an enormous geek? And I don’t mean that I’m fat, either… 🙂