Learn how to play Golf Solitaire. Discover the rules, setup, and strategy tips to lower your score and win more often.
Golf Solitaire is one of the fastest and most accessible games in the patience family. Unlike sequencing games such as Klondike or Spider — where the player builds columns and manages a tableau over many minutes — Golf Solitaire resolves in 90 to 150 seconds for most hands and provides a complete game experience that fits naturally into any short break. Despite its speed, Golf has genuine strategic content: the bidirectional chain mechanic, the stock draw timing, and the scoring system across multiple hands all reward deliberate play in ways that casual players rarely exploit.
Golf Solitaire is one of the fastest and most accessible games in the patience family. Unlike sequencing games such as Klondike or Spider — where the player builds columns and manages a tableau over many minutes — Golf Solitaire resolves in 90 to 150 seconds for most hands and provides a complete game experience that fits naturally into any short break. Despite its speed, Golf has genuine strategic content: the bidirectional chain mechanic, the stock draw timing, and the scoring system across multiple hands all reward deliberate play in ways that casual players rarely exploit.
The name comes from scoring: like golf, the aim is a low score, and each card left unplayed at the end of a hand counts as a penalty stroke. A complete clear — all 35 tableau cards played — scores zero for that hand. Over a series of hands, the player with the lowest cumulative score wins. If you are new to card games online, our free solitaire guide is a useful starting point before diving into Golf.
Golf Solitaire uses a single standard 52-card deck. At the start of each hand, 35 cards are dealt face-up into seven columns of five. The remaining 17 cards form the stock, placed face-down beside the tableau. The top card of the stock is flipped face-up to start the discard pile — this is the first chain card. No foundations are used. The goal is to play as many of the 35 tableau cards as possible onto the discard chain before the stock runs out.
Which Cards Are Playable
Only the top card of each tableau column is accessible at any time. When a column is emptied, it stays empty — there is no rule permitting new cards to be placed into empty column spaces. This means the number of accessible tableau cards decreases as the game progresses, never increases from tableau play alone.
The Chain Rule
A tableau card can be played onto the discard pile if its rank is exactly one higher or one lower than the current top of the discard pile, regardless of suit. This bidirectional rule — up or down — is Golf's defining mechanic and the one that casual players most frequently under-exploit. The chain can change direction at any time: a 7 can be followed by an 8 or a 6; the 8 can then be followed by a 9 or a 7. In the standard version of the game, the sequence does not wrap around: a King cannot be played on an Ace and an Ace cannot be played on a King.
Drawing from the Stock
When no accessible tableau card is one rank away from the current discard top — or when the player chooses to draw — the top card of the stock is flipped onto the discard pile, becoming the new chain top. Drawing from the stock ends any chain in progress: the new stock card replaces the previous chain top. Stock cards cannot be played back; once drawn, they are permanent additions to the discard pile. The hand ends when both the tableau is exhausted (a win) or the stock is exhausted without clearing the tableau (a loss, scored by the number of remaining tableau cards).
Each card remaining in the tableau at the end of a hand adds one penalty stroke to the player's score. A complete clear adds zero strokes and, in many implementations, subtracts two strokes as a bonus. Over a series of five hands — the standard Golf session — the player aims for the lowest possible cumulative score. A session score below ten is competitive; a session score below five indicates strong strategic play; a score of zero across five hands (five complete clears) is exceptional and requires both good deals and consistent strategy.
At the start of each hand, before making any move, scan all seven column tops for rank adjacency to the starting chain card. Check both directions: which cards are one rank above the chain top, and which are one rank below. This two-pass opening scan — checking up then down — is the single habit that most improves Golf performance, because the natural tendency trained by other solitaire games is to scan only in one direction.
After the opening scan, identify the chain extension that opens the most subsequent extensions. If both a 6 and an 8 are available to extend from a 7, check which one has more follow-up cards accessible: if the 6 column has a 5 or 7 behind it and the 8 column has a King behind it, playing the 6 first produces a longer expected chain. This one-move lookahead habit is the primary strategic skill Golf develops and the one that compounds most visibly across a five-hand session.
Always scan both directions before drawing from the stock. The bidirectional chain is Golf's core mechanic, and missing an upward extension while looking only downward is the most common source of premature stock draws. Before every draw, run a full two-pass scan: first check all column tops for a card one rank lower than the current chain top, then check again for a card one rank higher. Only after both passes find nothing should the stock be drawn. In a typical hand this two-pass scan adds three to five seconds per draw opportunity and recovers one to two chain extensions per hand that a single-pass scan would miss.
Prefer chain extensions that uncover useful follow-up cards. When multiple column tops are playable, choose the one whose removal exposes the most chain-extension potential in the card behind it. A column whose top card is playable and whose second card is also rank-adjacent to a likely future chain position is doubly valuable; a column whose top is playable but whose second card is a King or Ace with no adjacent cards in the tableau is best saved until the chain reaches a rank where the King or Ace becomes the natural extension point.
Manage Kings and Aces deliberately. Kings and Aces are the chain's natural terminals in the non-wrapping version of Golf: a King can only be reached from a Queen; an Ace can only be reached from a 2. A King or Ace sitting as a column top blocks that column completely until the chain reaches the adjacent rank. Identify buried Kings and Aces early and plan chain sequences that approach their adjacent ranks before being forced to draw from the stock past them.
Use the stock strategically, not reactively. Many players draw from the stock the moment the current chain stalls. A better habit is to evaluate whether the current chain top has any tableau extension available before drawing — including cards in partially-depleted columns whose tops have recently changed. A stock draw that resets the chain top to an inconvenient rank can close off multiple accessible column tops simultaneously, turning a manageable tableau into a stuck one. When in doubt about whether to extend or draw, spend two seconds rescanning the full tableau before committing to the draw.
Think in Chain Sequences, Not Single Moves
Golf is won by chains, not individual plays. The goal of each decision is not to play the next available card but to identify the sequence of available cards that produces the longest chain before the next forced stock draw. Players who think one move ahead achieve average chains of three to four cards; players who think two moves ahead achieve average chains of six to eight cards. The difference in hand score between a three-card average chain and a six-card average chain across seven stock draws is approximately 18 cards — the difference between a losing hand and a winning one.
Score Optimisation in Losing Hands
Golf and TriPeaks Solitaire are both scored across multiple hands, which means that continuing to extend the chain in a hand where a complete clear is impossible still has strategic value. Every additional card played in a losing hand reduces the penalty score by one. A player who stops playing when a complete clear becomes obviously impossible and resigns immediately scores more penalty strokes per session than a player who continues to extend the chain as far as possible. In Golf, partial progress is always scored — resignation before the stock is exhausted is never optimal.
Cross-Hand Pattern Recognition
Over a five-hand session, the player develops intuition for which opening chain tops produce long chains (mid-rank cards — 5s, 6s, 7s, 8s, 9s — have the most bidirectional extension opportunities) and which produce short ones (Kings and Aces as the starting chain top immediately block one direction entirely). This intuition, combined with the two-pass scan habit, produces consistent low scores without requiring extended calculation per hand. Our Golf Solitaire game tracks your session score across hands so you can measure your improvement directly.
Golf Solitaire deals 35 cards face-up into seven columns of five, with 17 cards forming a face-down stock. Flip the top stock card to start the discard chain. Play any accessible column-top card whose rank is exactly one higher or lower than the current discard top, extending the chain in either direction. Draw from the stock when no extension is available. Win by clearing all 35 tableau cards; score penalty strokes for each card remaining when the stock runs out. Play our free Golf Solitaire game to practise, or try the related TriPeaks Solitaire for a similar chain mechanic with a different tableau structure.
Three habits produce the largest score improvements. First, the bidirectional two-pass scan before every stock draw — checking rank-above then rank-below for every accessible column top — recovers missed chain extensions that a single-direction scan misses. Second, choosing between multiple playable cards based on the follow-up potential of the card behind each column top extends chains by two to three cards per hand on average. Third, continuing to extend the chain even in losing hands (rather than resigning early) reduces penalty strokes in every hand where a complete clear is impossible. For related strategic principles, see our advanced solitaire variants guide.
No. Approximately 35-45% of randomly dealt Golf hands are intrinsically unwinnable — no sequence of moves can clear all 35 tableau cards regardless of play quality. In these hands, the strategic goal shifts from a complete clear to score minimisation: playing as many tableau cards as possible to reduce penalty strokes. Players who understand this correctly never resign a Golf hand early; they continue extending the chain until the stock is exhausted, accepting the partial score as the best achievable outcome for that deal. For a full analysis of unwinnable solitaire deals, see our solitaire win rates guide.