YMMV / Freecell

• Popular Game Variant:
  • One can change the number of columns and freecells, by hand, or with an option in freecell.net. "Standard" or 8x4 has 8 columns, 4 freecells. The easier "Nine to Five" or 9x5 has 9 columns, 5 freecells.
  • The FreeCell FAQ discusses the idea of an "ephemeral freecell", which can hold a card but disappears when the card leaves it, requiring the player to make a careful decision about when to use it. One might mix ephemeral and regular freecells in the same game.
  • A common mistake is to play "relaxed FreeCell" by allowing long sequences of cards to be moved between columns. This goes against the nature of Freecell, where you're only allowed to move one card at a time - part of Freecell's challenge is finding ways to move all the cards you need. In standard FreeCell, one can only move sequences if there are enough free cells and empty columns to do the same thing by moving one card at a time.
  • Another mistake is to allow only kings in empty columns — a common restriction in other solitaires such as Klondike, but not in FreeCell, where empty columns act like additional free cells. Finding ways to get empty columns is an important part of the strategy.
  • xpat2 allows one to cheat by moving cards from home back to the columns or freecells.
• Self-Imposed Challenge: The most obvious one is reducing the number of free cells, sometimes even to zero (69 out of the original Microsoft 32000 can be solved with no freecells). Some software implementations will have this as an option. Another is to make the biggest "flourish" when cards automatically go to the home row at the end of the game. There are a few games where it is possible to set up a 52-card flourish, taking the home row from empty to full in one move flat.
• That One Level: On the other hand...some are not so simple. Almost every Freecell deal is winnable - but that doesn't mean they are easy - so you are bound to run into one of these at some point. Microsoft's #1941 in particular is generally considered the hardest (solvable) deal by many veteran players.