Solitaire Turn 3: what a smarter strategy is worth, in numbers
Solitaire Turn 3 is Klondike with a three-card draw: each click on the stock turns three cards over and only the top one can be played. On spidersolitaireonline.us we look at every game through one question — how much does playing thoughtfully add over playing the first move that fits? For Turn 3 the answer is: a great deal.
A bot that plays only the face-up cards, from a fixed list of priorities and without Undo, won 10.6% of 10,000 deals. A planning search, allowed to know the hidden cards, proved 66.2% of 1,000 deals winnable. Switch the same bot to one-card draw and it wins 42.3%. The three-card rule costs simple play about three quarters of its wins, while the deals themselves stay mostly winnable. That is the signature of a game where strategy, not luck, decides most results.
At a glance: simple play against planned play
| Rules | No-plan bot won (n = 10,000) | Planning search proved winnable (n = 1,000) | Proven impossible |
|---|---|---|---|
| Three-card draw (this page) | 10.6% (10.0–11.2%) | 66.2% (63.2–69.1%) | 9.5% (7.8–11.5%) |
| One-card draw | 42.3% (41.3–43.3%) | 76.6% (73.9–79.1%) | 2.1% (1.4–3.2%) |
Both rows use the same bot and the same deal numbers, so the comparison is fair. Under one-card draw the bot reaches a bit over half of the proven-winnable share; under three-card draw it reaches about one sixth of it. The planning search left 24.3% of Turn 3 deals undecided (95% range 21.7% to 27.1%), so the true winnable share lies between 66.2% and 90.5%. Blake and Gent's published estimate for perfect knowledge is 81.95%, inside that range.
The bot is a floor, not a human win rate: it never undoes and never plans. The search sees what you cannot. Your own results will fall between the two, and the tips below are about pushing them upward.
Turn 3 rules as played here
- Layout: seven columns of one to seven cards, top card of each face up; 24 cards in the stock; four foundations by suit, Ace to King.
- Drawing: three cards per click onto the waste. Only the top one plays; when it goes, the next one becomes available.
- Building: down in alternating colors. Any ordered face-up run may move if its top card fits.
- Empty columns: a King, or a run starting with a King, only.
- Redeals: unlimited. The waste turns back into the stock when it runs out.
- Foundations: a card can come back down to the tableau when needed.
What planning changes in Turn 3
The deal matters less than the play
We split deals by how many Aces started face down. The bot won 10.1% of deals with two or more hidden Aces and 12.3% of deals with none hidden. A couple of points, no more. The gap between 10.6% and 66.2% is not about unlucky layouts.
Steer the stock on purpose
With no waste plays, a pass shows only every third stock card, and the next pass shows the same ones. Each card you take from the waste shifts the groups for next time. Choose waste plays that bring the card you need to the top. The bot does this only by accident.
Budget for several passes
The bot's winning games used 3.8 passes through the stock on average (95% range 3.7 to 3.9), against 2.3 at one-card draw. Unlimited redeals mean there is no penalty for going around again, provided each pass is doing something.
Flip hidden cards first
Each face-down card you expose is a new option, and in Turn 3 options are scarce. Prefer moves that reveal a card, and start with the tallest columns.
Let Undo be your search
The planning search wins so often because it can try a line and back out. Unlimited Undo gives you the same power for the cards you can see: take a waste card, play the next pass, and undo if it led nowhere.
Features on this site
Solitaire Turn 3 is free in any modern browser on computer, tablet or phone, with no download, account or email address. Large cards and a zoom control, Hint, unlimited Undo, Restart, Auto Play, drag-and-drop or tap-to-move, and a tracker for wins, time and moves in the current game. Sound, fullscreen and table color are in the settings.
How we ran the numbers
The spidersolitaireonline.us team ran this study in September 2026 to measure what planning adds under the three-card draw on this site.
- Took the rules from our game code: three cards per click with the top one live, unlimited passes, Kings only in empty columns, one card allowed back from a foundation.
- Wrote the game in Python. One Klondike program covers both draw settings; we checked the bot's moves against the rules over 1,000 test games at each setting.
- Numbered the deals. Seeds 1 to 10,000 for the bot and 1 to 1,000 for the search, the same seeds as our one-card test, so the two rows compare like with like.
- Set two players against the same cards. The bot sees only face-up cards and never undoes. The depth-first search knows every card and works out exactly which stock cards it can reach under the three-card rule.
- Capped the search at 150,000 positions per deal before calling a deal undecided.
- Checked the literature. Blake and Gent (Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research, 2026) give 81.95% for this game with every card known.
- Gave ranges. Each percentage has a 95% range, a Wilson score interval.
- Named the limits. The bot is a floor. The search is a ceiling. About a quarter of search deals were undecided.
Everything uses only the Python standard library and ran on 19 processes on one machine: seconds for the bot's 10,000 deals, around 17 minutes for the search. Claude, an AI assistant made by Anthropic, helped us write and review the code and draft the page. The figures come only from running the code.
Questions about strategy in Turn 3
How much does good play matter in Turn 3?
More than in almost any other Klondike version. Our no-plan bot won 10.6%, while at least 66.2% of deals can be won.
Why is the three-card draw so much harder for simple play?
Two thirds of the stock is out of reach at any moment, and only deliberate waste plays change which cards come up.
Can every deal be won?
No. Our search proved 9.5% impossible even knowing every card, against 2.1% at one-card draw.
Is using Hint cheating?
No. It is a single-player game, and Hint is a good way to learn.
Where next?
The Klondike Turn 3 playbook goes deeper into stock steering, the Klondike page covers one-card draw, and Yukon has no stock at all. Every game is on the games page.
By Admin, spidersolitaireonline.us (Solitairen OOD). Research run September 2026.