Only the last card of each pile is turned face up and the rest are turned face down. The first pile always consists of 1 card, with each subsequent pile containing 1 more card than the preceding one. The tableau: Solitaire is played with 52 cards, with 28 of them being distributed in 7 piles across the tableau.To help you learn to play the game, let’s first explain what the playing field looks like. This game has even become so popular over time that most people simply call it “Solitaire”, without the “Klondike”. Solitaire is the collective name for a large number of single-player card games, of which Klondike Solitaire is the best known.