The FIRST Klondike solitaire with a Peek Button

There are more than 15,000 solitaire apps in the App Store — and exactly ONE lets you see the face-down cards. If you've been searching for a "face up solitaire," an "open solitaire," a solitaire where you can peek at hidden cards: this is it. The Original Solitaire+ is the first and only classic Klondike with a Peek Button (patent pending). Press and hold, see what's hidden, and plan your move like you would at the kitchen table.

Three Kings. One empty column. Which do you move?

Here's the moment that explains Peek better than any feature list. You've fought your way to an empty column — the most valuable real estate in Klondike — and you have three Kings that could take it. In ordinary solitaire this is a coin flip with three sides: the rules give you no information about which King is sitting on the card you actually need. So you guess. Then you undo. Then you guess again.

With Peek, you press and hold — and look:

Under the King of Spades: a 9 of Diamonds. Under the King of Diamonds: a 7 of Clubs. But under the King of Hearts sits the Ace of Clubs — a card that has to reach the foundation sooner or later, and it's doing nothing buried under a King. Move the King of Hearts, free the Ace, and the whole deal opens up. One held button turned a blind guess into a plan.

Watch it play out

Where Peek actually came from

Not from a rulebook — from watching how real players handle Klondike's blind spots. You've seen the move (you've made the move): lift a card off a pile just to see what's hiding under it, then undo. Kings are the giveaway — with no color requirement, players will try two or even all three on an empty column, moving each one, looking, undo-ing, before "deciding" anything. That guess-and-undo shuffle isn't strategy; it's the game withholding information and players clawing it back one undo at a time. The Peek Button is simply the honest version of the move everyone was already making: press, hold, see — then make one real decision. And because Peek lets you look further up the piles than any undo trick, the game starts playing like FreeCell when you want it to — more strategy, less luck.

Peek vs Tri-Peaks (and the old "Peek Solitaire")

Is Peek the same as Tri-Peaks Solitaire? No. TriPeaks is a different solitaire game entirely — you clear three pyramid-shaped peaks of cards by rank, up or down. The Peek Button isn't a game; it's a feature inside classic Klondike solitaire, the one that lets you see the face-down cards before you commit a move.

What about "Peek Solitaire"? There is an old, little-known Klondike variant by that name, played with all the face-down cards visible from the start. Honest admission: we'd never heard of it when we built the Peek Button — kindred spirits arrive at similar names :) And the difference matters: that variant deals the mystery away permanently, while the Peek Button keeps classic solitaire exactly as you know it and gives you the look only when you choose to take it. The cards stay down. The guessing goes.

Isn't that cheating?

Play solitaire with a real deck at your kitchen table and watch what your hands do at exactly this moment: they lift the corner of the card and look. Everyone peeks — it's the most natural move in the game. The only reason digital solitaire never let you is that nobody built the button. We did, and we're the only ones who have it (patent pending).

Here's the part we care about more, though: Peek doesn't play the game for you. It doesn't move a card, doesn't fix a bad plan, doesn't win anything on your behalf. It gives you information — what you do with it is still entirely your game. That's the difference between Peek and the guess-and-undo loop: undoing your way through every possibility is trial and error; peeking and choosing is actual thinking.

Face up solitaire, open solitaire — what's the difference?

Card historians know that all-cards-visible Klondike is a real, old idea. Variants where every card is dealt face up have circulated for decades under names like Peek, Open Klondike, and Face Up Solitaire — and FreeCell, the most strategy-pure solitaire of all, is beloved precisely because you see everything from the first move. Full information turns a game of luck into a game of decisions.

The Peek button gives you that same open-information game with one improvement: the reveal is yours to invoke. Cards stay face down until you choose to look, so the game keeps its shape — the drama of the flip, the satisfaction of the dig — while the decisions become informed ones. It's face-up solitaire's brain with classic Klondike's heart.

What Peek is not

Peek is not a rescue rope, and we'd rather you didn't think of it as one. Solitaire already has tools for second chances — we give you unlimited Undo and Hint, free, without triggering ads. Peek is for before the move, not after the mistake: it's how you decide which of two black 8s to play, which column to dig, which King earns the empty space. Strategic players peek early and often — not because they're lost, but because they're planning. That's why we say it's better brain training: comparing options and committing to a line exercises your head in a way guessing never will.

How to use Peek like a strategist

• Peek before empty-column decisions. The three-Kings moment above is the classic — never spend an empty column blind.
• Peek to pick between equal moves. Two red 6s can take that black 7. The right one is whichever frees the better card underneath.
• Peek to choose your dig. Which column hides your missing Aces and 2s? Aim your effort there instead of spreading it thin.
• Peek before the stock. Knowing what's buried tells you whether to reshape the tableau now or draw first.

These habits — plus the classic fundamentals — are laid out move by move in How to win solitaire more often. And if you want to see how much the odds actually leave on the table for informed players, read what percentage of solitaire games are winnable.

Try it right now

The Peek button is live in the free browser game — no download, no signup — and in The Original Solitaire+ on the App Store, crafted by a team making mobile solitaire since 2003.