How to play Baker's Game
Goal - Move all the cards to the Foundation
Decks
- A standard deck (52 cards)
Redeals
- No
Foundation
- Built up by suit from Ace to King
- The top card of each pile is available for move
Tableau
- Built down by suit
- The top card of each pile is available for move
- Group of cards in the proper sequence can be moved so long as there are enough empty Cell+Tableau piles available
- An empty pile can be filled with any card or correctly ranked pile
Cell
- Can contain 1 card
- The top card of each pile is available for move
Strategy & tips
- Plan backwards from the goal. Spot your Aces and Twos, then trace the path to liberate them before touching anything else — every move that brings an Ace closer to the foundation pays off.
- Treat free cells as savings, not pockets. Each parked card is one less you'll have to move later, but an occupied cell is also a card that no longer participates in the tableau. Avoid filling all four cells in the same turn or you'll lose all group-move capacity.
- Protect empty columns like assets. An empty column doubles your moving capacity and acts as a swap space for long sequences. Only fill it with a King as a last resort — and only with a King that opens a playable suite.
- Before promoting a card to its foundation, check whether a lower opposite-colour card might still need it as a bridge. Promoting too early — especially 5s, 6s, and 7s — can dead-end the late game by stripping a key support.
- If a classic deal stumps you, try the Relax variants (Eight Off Relaxed, Seahaven Towers Relaxed): looser group-move rules that rebuild confidence before returning to standard FreeCell.
Origin & history
Described in print by C.L. Baker, FreeCell's intellectual ancestor. Paul Alfille relaxed the suit constraint in Baker's Game to invent FreeCell.