Yukon Solitaire is a fun card game that requires the ability to plan elaborate sequences of long moves. It is quite unusual compared to other solitaire games, because it allows you to move stacks of cards when they are not in sequence.
It’s not possible to win every Yukon Solitaire game, but a good player should be able to win more than 80% of the games they play, if they use the right strategy…
The key to doing well in Yukon Solitaire is working backwards. Instead of making any possible move, the player must work to expose the face up cards.
Starting from the first pile, look at the top exposed 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 better 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 over Red 7
Red 3 over 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 a card is 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 underneath it, the game would crash because there would be nowhere to move the other red three into) .
When that happens, just move on to the next column. I find it helpful to leave the mouse cursor over the column I’m currently parsing. This helps me remember which column I’m on, which can be particularly useful if you’ve just researched a very long sequence.
If you can’t find any columns that can be exposed, it’s time to start looking for cards to release that can be moved to the foundation. 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.
