February 2026: What 11,064 Solitaire Games Tell Us

Published: March 2026 · Data period: February 1–28, 2026 · Sample: 11,064 games started (≥1 move), across 23 game variants

This is the first post in what will be a monthly series. Every month, we’ll publish the raw numbers from TrySolitaire’s anonymous gameplay data — win rates, player behavior, what’s popular, what’s hard — with no commentary agenda beyond letting the data speak. February is our baseline. We’ll be back in March with the first real comparison.

Here’s what 11,064 games told us.

The Big Number

11,064 games started. 3,154 won. 28.5% overall win rate.

That overall win rate is a bit misleading — it’s dragged down by Golf (10.7%) and Pyramid (15.9%) at one end, and pulled up by Mahjong (76.4%) at the other. The per-game breakdown tells a more interesting story.

Game Popularity

Klondike is dominant — not surprisingly, but the degree is worth noting.

Three out of four games played on TrySolitaire in February were Klondike. Spider is a distant second at 6.6%. Every other game is rounding error by comparison — for now.

One note on “everything else”: we have 23 game variants available. Most of the tail games (Easthaven, Forty Thieves, Beleaguered Castle, Scorpion, Wasp, and others) had fewer than 35 starts each in February. We’ll report on those as volume grows.

Win Rates

Win rate here means wins divided by starts — we treat an abandoned game the same as a loss. This gives a more honest picture than wins-among-completions only.

A few things stand out:

Draw 1 vs Draw 3 Klondike is not a small difference — it’s a 3.4x difference. Draw 1 players win 30.3% of the time. Draw 3 players win 8.9%. Same game, same cards, one rule change. We’ll dig into this properly in a future post.

Spider’s difficulty curve is steep. 1-suit wins at 52.8%. Add a second suit and you drop to 22.4%. Add all four and you’re at 21.2% — barely different from 2-suit, which suggests the jump from 1-suit to multi-suit is the hard part, not the jump from 2-suit to 4-suit. With only 85 games of 4-suit in February, treat that number as directional rather than definitive.

Golf is hard. 10.7% win rate across 347 games is a real signal. It’s not far behind Draw 3 Klondike, which has a reputation for being brutal. If you want to feel good about your solitaire skills, Golf is not your game.

Mahjong’s 76.4% win rate makes it the clear “accessible” option on TrySolitaire — though it’s worth noting that nearly all Mahjong plays (398 of 444) were the Turtle layout. Other layouts had thin sample sizes this month.

Speed & Efficiency

Average duration and move counts across all February games (winners and non-winners combined):

FreeCell at 48 minutes average is striking — it’s nearly 4x longer than Klondike. That reflects the game’s nature: FreeCell is almost always solvable (our win rate of 32% is lower than theoretical because of abandons), so players who start tend to grind through to the end. Spider at 29 minutes tells a similar story.

Golf and TriPeaks are the quick-hit games. Under 5 minutes average means players are either winning fast or knowing quickly when a deal is unwinnable.

Winners vs. Non-Winners

For games with enough completed data, here’s how winners compare to non-winners on key behavior metrics:

A few observations:

Spider winners use 6.5 undos on average. That’s the highest undo usage of any game. Spider rewards careful planning and undoing mistakes — the undo button isn’t a crutch here, it appears to be part of how the game gets won. We’ll explore the undo question across all games in a future post.

Golf non-winners quit faster than winners play. Non-winners average 5 minutes, but winners average 4. That sounds counterintuitive until you remember that Golf deals can be unwinnable — experienced players may recognize a dead deal quickly and bail. Winners play the full game through to completion.

Pyramid non-winners use more undos than winners (1.0 vs 0.0). Possibly an indicator that struggling players reach for the undo button while winning players don’t need it — or that undoing in Pyramid doesn’t actually help. Worth watching as sample sizes grow.

Mobile vs. Desktop

Desktop dominates — nearly 7 in 10 games were played on a larger screen. Mobile skews toward certain games: Golf (59% mobile), FreeCell (53% mobile), and Mahjong (48% mobile) were the most mobile-heavy. TriPeaks was overwhelmingly desktop (85%).

We’ll track whether win rates differ between mobile and desktop as sample sizes grow. The hypothesis that desktop players win more (easier controls, less accidental moves) is something our data should be able to answer in a few months.

Spotlight Stat

The gap between Klondike Draw 1 and Draw 3 is 21 percentage points.

Draw 1: 30.3% win rate. Draw 3: 8.9% win rate. Both are the same game. Both use the same 52-card deck. The only difference is how many cards you flip from the stock at once.

That single rule change makes Klondike Draw 3 roughly as hard as Golf — a game most people would describe as difficult. If you’ve been playing Draw 3 and wondering why solitaire feels impossible, this is why. Try Klondike Draw 1 and see if the experience changes.

What’s Next

We’ll be back in March with the second report — the first one where we can actually compare month-over-month. In the meantime:

• A deep dive into Draw 1 vs Draw 3 Klondike is coming — the win rate gap deserves its own post with full analysis
• We’ll look at whether undo usage actually correlates with winning across all games
• The Spider difficulty curve (1-suit → 2-suit → 4-suit) is worth a dedicated analysis once we have more 4-suit data

The most-played game in February was Klondike Draw 1. Play it here →

All data is anonymous. TrySolitaire does not track individual users. Win rates are calculated as wins divided by total starts (treating abandons as non-wins). Games with fewer than 50 starts are excluded from this report. Data collection began January 29, 2026; February is our first complete month.

Published March 4, 2026 | TrySolitaire Blog · Play Free Solitaire