Microsoft shipped several implementations of Freecell for its Windows operating systems called “Microsoft FreeCell” which contributed to popularising the game. They dealt cards with numbered deals using a shuffling algorithm based on inputting the number of the deal into the Microsoft C Run time library pseudorandom number generator. The algorithm for dealing cards was made available by Jim Horne, a Microsoft software developer who implemented Microsoft FreeCell.

While the original MS FreeCell only dealt deals in the range 1 to 32,000, these deals can be extended up to a 31-bit number and were later extended by Freecell Pro to 33-bits dealing.

The Microsoft deals are considered canonical among Freecell researchers in their studies of the game.

For more information, see:

1. range_solvers_gen_ms_boards.h and gen_ms_boards__rand.h - from the Freecell Solver's source - implementations of the dealing algorithm in optimised C under the MIT/Expat licence.

2. “Deal cards for FreeCell” on Rosetta Code - implementations in many programming languages, which should be easy-to-understand, but which are under a problematic licence.

3. The impossible 4-freecells and 5-freecells deals in Freecell Pro’s Range of Deals.

4. The minimal number of freecells needed to win for each deal in the original Microsoft FreeCell 32,000 deals.

5. The PyPI pysol_cards module - implementation of the dealing algorithm in python under the MIT/Expat licence.

6. Freecell::Deal::MS - self-contained, hopefully portable and reliable, implementation in Perl and on CPAN, under the MIT/Expat licence.