Yukon Solitaire is a fun card game that requires the ability to plan elaborate sequences of long moves. It’s quite unusual compared to other solitaire games in that it allows you to move stacks of cards when they’re not in sequence.

It is not possible to win all Yukon Solitaire games, but a good player should be able to win more than 80% of the games he plays, if he uses the right strategy…

The key to doing well in Yukon Solitaire is to work backwards. Instead of making any move possible, the player must work to expose the up cards.

Starting from the first pile, look at the exposed top card. Then try to find another card that the exposed card can be moved to, and then try to rearrange the cards to make the move.

This could be best shown with an example:

Suppose the top exposed card in a column is a red 3. You need to find a black four to play. There is only one black four in play at the moment, and it has a black 6 directly below it. So the black 6 must move… which means a red 7 is needed. Suppose there is a red 7 visible at the bottom of a stack… Then the game would proceed like this:

Black 6 on Red 7

Red 3 on Black 4

And now a covered card has been exposed in the column.

Now usually the sequence will take longer than that. Sometimes I have played sequences of more than 10 moves!

You will find that some columns may not be exposed at this time. Either there is a card missing from the sequence, or a card you need is already being used (in the example above, if the black four already had a red three under it, the game would crash because there would be nowhere to move the other red three in). .

When that happens, just move on to the next column. I find it helpful to leave my mouse cursor over the column I’m currently parsing. This helps me remember which column I’m in, which can be particularly helpful if you’ve just investigated a very long sequence.

If you can’t find any columns that can be exposed, it’s time to start looking for cards to free up that can be moved to the base. Is there a card you can move that will allow you to release an Ace?

If you follow this advice, you will find that you can easily win at least 80% of the Yukon Solitaire games you play.