Turn 3 Solitaire
The traditional draw: three cards turn at once and only the top one is playable, so the order of the stock matters as much as the columns do. Harder than turn one, and the reason many players prefer it.
ObjectiveThe same Klondike goal — four suits from Ace to King — with the stock turning three cards at a time.
Same layout, harder arithmetic
Turn 3 deals the identical Klondike layout — seven columns, four foundations, twenty-four stock cards — and changes exactly one rule: the stock flips three cards at once, and only the top card of the three is playable. That single change roughly halves most players' win rate, which is why draw three is the version traditionalists mean when they say Klondike is hard.
The arithmetic is the point. A pass through a turn-one stock offers all twenty-four cards. A pass through a turn-three stock offers eight — the top of each fan — and which eight depends entirely on how many cards you played out of earlier fans.
- Build the four foundations up from Ace to King, one suit each.
- Columns build downwards in alternating colours.
- Only a King, or a run headed by one, may fill an empty column.
- Turn the stock as often as you like — the waste recycles.
How to play the stock in draw three
- 01
Run the whole stock once before committing
Recycling is unlimited and unpenalised here, so a full reconnaissance pass costs nothing but time. It tells you which cards sit on top of a fan, which are one shift away, and which are buried two deep behind cards you do not want.
- 02
Count in threes, not in cards
A card in the middle of a fan becomes playable when you consume exactly one card earlier in the cycle; the bottom card of a fan needs two. Knowing that number turns “I hope it comes up” into a plan.
- 03
Use tableau moves to shift the cycle
You cannot reorder the stock directly, but every waste card you play re-cuts everything behind it. Engineering a small tableau move purely to consume one waste card is the signature skill of draw-three play.
- 04
Do not empty the waste for its own sake
Clearing the waste feels like progress and often destroys a favourable cut. If the current alignment makes three useful cards reachable, protect it — the alignment is worth more than the tidiness.
What the harder draw costs, measured
| Turn 1 | Turn 3 (this page) | |
|---|---|---|
| Shortest verified win | 120 moves | 101 moves |
| Median verified win | 149 moves | 126 moves |
| Longest verified win | 166 moves | 166 moves |
| Stock cards visible per pass | 24 | 8 |
The counter-intuitive part is that verified turn-three wins are shorter. Turn 1 lets a solver shuffle cards back and forth cheaply, so its optimal lines wander; turn 3 punishes wandering, and the deals that survive verification tend to be the ones with tight, direct solutions. Fewer moves, each carrying far more weight.
If this page is a step too far, the turn-one table is the same game with the stock opened up. The shared fundamentals — digging, King management, holding low cards back — are covered on the Klondike page.
Questions about this game
- Is turn 3 solitaire much harder than turn 1?
- Substantially. The layout and goals are identical, but seeing only every third stock card at a time hides most of your options on any pass. Players who win around forty percent of turn-one games commonly drop to twenty-or-so percent at turn 3 — although with this site's verified deals, every game still has a winning line waiting.
- How many passes through the stock do I get?
- Unlimited. This table recycles the waste back into the stock as often as you need, with no score penalty, so turn 3's difficulty here is purely about reading the fans rather than racing a pass limit.
- Why would anyone choose the harder draw?
- Because the decisions are richer. Turn 1 games are mostly about the tableau; turn 3 makes the stock itself a puzzle you manipulate through tableau play. Wins feel earned in a way turn 1 cannot quite match.