How to Play Canister Solitaire

A straightforward game where all cards are dealt face up at the start with no stock. You build four foundation piles upward while arranging the eight tableau piles by descending rank, regardless of suit. Simple rules but can be tricky to solve.

Setup

1. All 52 cards are dealt face up across eight tableau piles
2. Four empty foundation piles await Aces to start them

How to play

• Look for Aces and move them to the foundation piles to start the sequences
• Build foundation piles upward by rank in the same suit (A♠ → 2♠ → 3♠, etc.)
• In the tableau, build downward by rank in any suit (like 9♦ → 8♠ → 7♣ → 6♥). You can move a properly ordered run of cards together.
• An empty tableau pile accepts any card or sequence
• You have no stock to work with—all moves come from the cards on the table
• Cards automatically move to the foundations once no other card can be built on them. You can turn this off in Settings if you prefer to move them manually.

How to win

Objective: Move all 52 cards to the four foundation piles to win

You win when all cards reach the foundation piles. You're stuck when no legal plays remain.

Tips

• Create empty tableau piles to open up buried cards
• Look ahead to see if clearing a card will free cards you need below it
• If you get stuck early, the game may not have a solution from that deal

Play Canister free on Windows

CardTray is a free solitaire app for Windows that includes Canister alongside 300+ other games. It saves every move as you play, so you can close the window and pick the game up later, replay any deal, and take on a new Daily Challenge deal every day. Browse every game in the Game Gallery.

Related games

More games from the Baker's Dozen family:

• Exiled Kings — A streamlined solitaire where you deal cards to foundations and tableau, building down by rank in the tableau while filling empty spaces only with Kings.
• Four Leaf Clovers — A single-deck game where every card lands on one shared foundation pile, no matter its suit, climbing upward one rank at a time and wrapping from King back to Ace to place all 52 cards.
• Luckier Thirteen — An open-tableau game where you build down in alternating colors across thirteen piles, with the friendly twist that any card can fill an empty pile.
• Martha — Build four foundations from aces while managing twelve tableau columns that start with a mix of face-up and face-down cards.
• Morehead — This single-deck game plays like Somerset but with a twist: you build on the tableau into a different suit rather than a matching color, moving only one card at a time as you work toward the foundations.