Baker's Dozen Solitaire: Complete Rules and Strategy Guide

Baker's Dozen has the highest win rate of any solitaire variant at around 90%. That number is not a fluke. The game is deliberately designed to be solvable: every card is face-up from the first move, Kings are automatically moved to the bottom of their columns at setup, and there is no stock pile introducing random new cards mid-game. What Baker's Dozen asks instead is whether you can plan single-card moves carefully enough to unblock a fully visible puzzle.

Why Baker's Dozen is the most winnable solitaire

Most solitaire variants combine skill with luck. In Klondike, the order in which cards come out of the stock determines whether a deal is winnable regardless of how well you play. In Pyramid, certain card distributions make the deal mathematically unwinnable. Baker's Dozen removes most of this randomness.

The no-stock rule means no surprise cards appear mid-game. The all-face-up rule means you can see every card from move one. The King-sinking rule means the four cards that would otherwise cause the most serious blocking problems are already at the bottom of their columns where they belong.

The remaining ~10% of unwinnable deals are deals where the card arrangement creates an unavoidable circular dependency: card A is blocking card B, card B is blocking card C, and card C is blocking card A. With only single-card moves allowed, there is no way to break the cycle.

Setup

Baker's Dozen uses a standard 52-card deck. The layout:

• 13 columns of 4 cards each (all 52 cards)
• All cards are placed face-up
• After dealing, all Kings are moved to the bottom of their respective columns (the position closest to the table)
• No stock pile, no waste pile, no reserve
• Four foundation piles start empty

The King-sinking step happens automatically at setup, before you make a single move. If a column contains two Kings, both go to the bottom of that column, with the original order between them preserved. This is why Kings can never block other cards in Baker's Dozen.

Rules explained

On each turn, you move one card from the top of any column to a legal destination. Legal destinations are:

• Any card that is exactly one rank higher and any suit (builds are not suit-specific in the tableau)
• An empty column (any card can go there)
• A foundation pile, if the card is the next rank needed (foundations build Ace through King, all four suits separately)

Note that tableau builds do not need to match suit. A 7 of Hearts can go on either an 8 of Spades or an 8 of Diamonds. This is less restrictive than Scorpion or Spider, but remember: you can still only move one card at a time, so any card you park on another card must be moved individually later.

There is no dealing from a stock and no redeal. The 52 cards you see at the start are all the cards in the game.

5 strategy tips

1. 1

   Send Aces to foundations immediately

   Aces are the only cards that can start a foundation pile. An Ace sitting in the middle of a column is doing nothing for you there. Whenever an Ace is the top card of a column, move it to a foundation. The 2 of its suit follows as soon as it becomes available.
2. 2

   Plan two or three moves ahead before each move

   Because you can see every card, Baker's Dozen rewards planning. Before moving a card, ask: what does this expose, and will I be able to do something useful with the newly exposed card? A move that exposes a card you cannot immediately use may still be correct if it unblocks a sequence two moves later.
3. 3

   Use empty columns as staging areas, not storage

   An empty column lets you park a card temporarily while you rearrange another column. The key word is temporarily. Leaving a card parked in an empty column while you do unrelated moves elsewhere is a waste. Get in and out: use the empty column, complete the rearrangement it enabled, and free the column again.
4. 4

   Work from the top of foundations upward

   Do not chase a suit just because you can see most of it. Make sure the next card needed for each foundation is actually reachable. If your 3 of Clubs needs the 2 of Clubs first, and the 2 of Clubs is buried under four other cards, clear those four cards before building the foundations further.
5. 5

   Watch for deadlock patterns early

   Deadlocks in Baker's Dozen form when card A is blocking card B, which is blocking card C, which is blocking card A. These cycles are visible from the start because all cards are face-up. Scan for circular dependencies in the first few moves. If you see one that cannot be broken, the deal may be unwinnable. Recognizing this early saves time.

Frequently asked questions