What happens when you run out of moves?

When the tableau offers no legal move and the stock is empty or exhausted, that deal can't be completed. In Klondike this often happens when a key low card is buried beneath cards that need it to move first, a chicken-and-egg lock. Not every game is winnable: see what percentage of solitaire is winnable for how common dead deals really are.

You can use undo to rewind and try a different sequence, which sometimes reveals that an earlier choice, not the shuffle, killed the game. If the position was genuinely dead from the start, no line saves it and you deal fresh. Using undo this way is a learning tool, not cheating, as our undo and hints answer explains.

Strong players spot a doomed deal early and move on rather than grinding a hopeless position. Look for low cards trapped under their own blockers. In games with full information like FreeCell, a loss almost always means a mistake rather than bad luck, so it's worth undoing to find where it went wrong.