To set up a classic Solitaire (Klondike) game:
- Shuffle a standard 52-card deck well.
- Deal cards into seven columns (tableau piles) in a cascading manner:
- The first column gets 1 card face up.
- The second column gets 1 card face up and 1 card face down beneath it.
- The third column gets 1 card face up with 2 cards face down beneath, and so on, increasing cards per column consecutively until the seventh column has 7 cards.
- The top card in each column is face up, all others are face down.
- Place the remaining cards face down as the draw deck (stockpile), usually to the side.
- Your solitaire setup is ready to play!
The goal is to move cards into four foundation piles by suit in ascending order from Ace to King. You play by moving cards in descending order and alternating colors on the tableau.