Westcliff

Westcliff is Klondike with the columns squashed flat: three rows of seven instead of a staircase, so nothing is buried more than two cards deep, and any card at all can move into a space you clear.

Those two changes make it a noticeably gentler game than Klondike without changing what you are doing. The catch is a single pass through the talon, which is what keeps the classic version down to about one win in four. Its American variant deals ten columns of three and is easier again — nine deals in ten — and its close relative Easthaven adds a forced row deal and restricts spaces to Kings.

Twenty-one cards go down in three overlapping rows of seven, the first two rows face down and the third face up. Columns pack down in alternating colours, and Aces are lifted to the foundations as they become available, building up by suit to King. The talon is dealt once through. The generous rule is the spaces: an emptied column takes any card or any sequence, not just a King, which is a real advantage over Klondike.

With only three cards per column, the face-down cards are shallow — two deep at most — so flipping them is cheap and should come first. Any card can fill an empty column, so clearing one early is straightforwardly good, unlike in Klondike where you wait on a King. The constraint is the single pass through the talon: once it is spent there is nothing new coming, so extract everything the tableau will give you before leaning on it. At around 1 in 4 for the classic version it is a middling game; the American variant with ten columns of three is far easier at roughly nine in ten.