Solitaire Games
Choose your own foundation base rank from five dealt cards before play begins. Same wrapping foundations and alternating-color tableau as Canfield.
Choose a card from the selection to set the base rank for foundations.
Choose a card to set the foundation base rank. That card goes to its foundation; the other 4 deal to the tableau.
Canfield Solitaire is named after Richard A. Canfield (1855–1914), an American gambler who ran the Canfield Casino in Saratoga Springs, New York. He sold decks for $52 and paid $5 per card moved to foundations — a maximum payout of $260, but most games moved far fewer than 20 cards. The game is also widely known as Demon Solitaire in the United Kingdom. Win rates with optimal play are estimated at 3–5 percent — among the lowest of any commonly played solitaire format.
Canfield’s defining feature: foundations do not start on Aces. The first card dealt sets the base rank for all four suits. If that card is a 7, all four foundations build 7→8→9→10→J→Q→K→A→2→3→4→5→6. The three remaining base-rank cards are immediate priority targets — playing them is the essential opening task.
The 13-card reserve is Canfield’s other core structure. Only the top card is available at any time, and it must always factor into your move evaluation. Tableau sequences wrap around — Ace goes on 2, King on Ace — creating more legal moves than Klondike but making poor sequencing harder to recover from.
All seven variants are available from the Rules button above. A brief summary of what each changes:
Think in full wrapping cycles. If the base is 9, the full sequence is 9→10→J→Q→K→A→2→3→4→5→6→7→8. Cards just above the base are urgent; cards just below the base will be last. In draw-three, each stock cycle skips two-thirds of the deck — exhaust every foundation and tableau move before cycling.