Golf Solitaire: a quick game with a split personality
Golf is one of the quickest games on this site. The table holds 35 face-up cards, arranged as seven columns five cards deep. One card starts the foundation pile, and you clear the columns by playing their bottom cards onto it, one rank up or down. When you are stuck, turn a card from the 16-card stock. Empty every column and the game is yours.
On our difficulty ladder, Golf has two faces. Measured by how many deals can be won, it is one of the friendliest games here: with the rules this site uses, 92.7% of 10,000 deals have a solution. Measured by how a player that cannot see the stock does, it is mid-ladder: our simple greedy player won 22.4%, between classic Solitaire Turn 1 (42.3%) and Turn 3 (10.6%). The difference between those two numbers is almost entirely about planning ahead.
This page shows where Golf sits, why this site's version is so winnable, the rules we use, and how we measured it.
Where Golf ranks
| Measure | Golf (this page) | For comparison |
|---|---|---|
| Deals that can be won (stock order known) | 92.7% (92.2–93.2%), 10,000 deals | FreeCell: 99.68% solved; Spider 4 suits: 98.5% (published) |
| Deals proven impossible | 7.3% | Solitaire Turn 1: 2.1%; Turn 3: 9.5% |
| Simple greedy player won | 22.4% (21.6–23.2%) | Spider 1 suit: 52.8%; Spider 2 suits: 5.7% |
The 92.7% is exact: our solver settled every deal. It does know the order of the stock, which you do not, so it is the most that is possible rather than what you should expect. The greedy player knows only what you see.
The rule that doubles your chances
On this site, Golf lets you wrap around the ends: you may play a King on an Ace, or an Ace on a King. Many versions of Golf do not allow that.
We tested both. Without the wrap, only 44.0% of 3,000 deals can be won, which agrees with the 45.1% published by Blake and Gent for the no-wrap game. With the wrap, it rises to 92.7%. For our greedy player, the jump is even bigger in proportion: from 3.2% without the wrap to 22.4% with it.
So the wrap roughly doubles how many deals can be solved, and makes a simple player about seven times as successful. Of all the rule changes we measured, it is the most generous.
Golf rules on spidersolitaire.us
- Layout: seven columns of five cards, all face up.
- Foundation: a single pile, started with one card.
- Stock: 16 cards, turned one at a time onto the foundation. No second pass.
- Playing: move the bottom card of any column to the foundation if it is one rank above or below the top card. Suit and color do not matter.
- Wrapping: King and Ace connect in both directions.
- Winning: clear all 35 cards from the columns. Stock cards left over do not count against you.
Playing Golf with the numbers in mind
Look for the longest chain, not the first move
Our greedy player picks the column card that starts the longest visible chain of plays. That is a good habit. A card that lets you play five more is worth more than one that leads nowhere.
No match on the first card? That happens a lot
In 27.4% of deals, the first foundation card had no match anywhere at the bottom of the columns. Don't worry; turn a stock card and carry on.
You have almost no stock to spare
In deals that could be won, the first solution our solver found left only about one stock card unused on average. Every stock card you turn early is one you cannot turn later. Play every useful column card before reaching for the stock.
Use the wrap on purpose
Kings and Aces are bridges. A long run that climbs to a King can carry straight on into Aces and 2s. Plan runs that use it.
Replay the same deal
With 92.7% of deals winnable, a loss usually means a better route exists. Restart replays the same cards, so you can try a different line.
Features on spidersolitaire.us
Golf is free in any modern browser on computer, tablet or phone. No download, account, sign-up or email address needed. Large clear cards, a zoom control, Hint, unlimited Undo, Restart, Auto Play, and drag-and-drop or tap to move. Wins, time and moves are tracked for the current game; sound can be switched off; fullscreen and table colors are available.
Behind the numbers: how we ran the study
In September 2026 the spidersolitaire.us team measured Golf to see where it sits on our ladder and how much the wrap rule matters.
- Started from the code that runs our game. Seven columns of five face up, one foundation, a 16-card stock with no second pass, plays one rank up or down, and King–Ace wrapping. This is the only Golf version on the site.
- Rebuilt Golf as a program, with a switch to turn the wrap off for comparison.
- Dealt numbered hands. Deals 1 to 10,000 with the wrap and 1 to 3,000 without, each shuffled from a fixed seed so the test repeats card for card.
- Chose two players. An exhaustive solver that knows the stock order and checks every possible line, which gives an exact answer for each deal. And a greedy player that knows only the visible cards and plays the move with the longest visible follow-up, drawing only when stuck.
- Ran every deal. The solver settled all 13,000: each is either won or proven impossible.
- Checked against published research. Blake and Gent (Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research, 2026) give 45.1% for Golf without the wrap. Ours is 44.0%, inside the margin of error. They do not report the wrap version.
- Calculated the margin of error. For 92.7%, the 95% range is 92.2% to 93.2%. For the no-wrap 44.0%, it is 42.2% to 45.8%.
- Stated the limits. The solver knows the stock order, so 92.7% is a ceiling. The greedy player is deliberately simple; a player who thinks ahead will do much better than 22.4%.
The code behind the ladder
The simulation is Python 3.11, standard library only, in the golf.py module. The solver is an exhaustive depth-first search over three things: how many cards remain in each column, how far into the stock you are, and the rank on top of the foundation. It remembers every dead-end state it has seen, so it never explores the same one twice, which is what lets it settle every deal. The 10,000 wrap deals took about 12 minutes and the 3,000 no-wrap deals about 7 minutes, spread across 19 worker processes on a 20-core machine.
Ranges are Wilson score 95% intervals. Claude, Anthropic's AI assistant, worked with us on writing and reviewing the code and on drafting this text. No figure came from the AI: all of them come from running the program, and the team checked the no-wrap result against the published figure before publishing.
Ladder questions, answered with data
Why is Golf so quick?
There are only 35 cards to clear and every play goes to one pile. Most decisions are simple; the skill is in the order.
Can a King follow an Ace on spidersolitaire.us?
Yes, on this site. That wrap is why so many deals can be won here.
How often can a Golf deal be won?
92.7% of deals have a solution with this site's rules, according to our solver.
Is Golf harder than Spider?
For our simple players, Golf (22.4%) falls between one-suit Spider (52.8%) and two-suit Spider (5.7%).
What game should I try next?
Pyramid is another quick game where you clear a face-up layout. Our games page lists the rest.
By Admin, spidersolitaire.us. Research run September 2026.