Skip to content
Ace to KingPlay now

Draw 1 or draw 3

Turn 1 vs Turn 3 Solitaire — What Changes and Which to Play

Turn 1 and Turn 3 are the same game of Klondike with one rule changed: how many cards you take from the stock at a time. That one rule changes how much of the deck you can reach, and how many deals can be won.

One rule apart

Both modes deal the same seven piles, build the tableau down in alternating colors and collect the suits on the foundations from ace to king. Everything happens the same way until you reach for the stock.

  • Turn 1, also called draw one or one-card draw: each turn moves a single card from the stock to the waste, face up, and that card can be played at once.
  • Turn 3, also called draw three or three-card draw: you take three cards together, keep them in their order and lay them face up on the waste. Only the top one of the three can be played. Once it is gone, the one beneath it is free, and then the last one.
The waste in each mode. In Turn 1 the card you just turned is the one you can play. In Turn 3 three cards arrive together, and only the top one, here the 9 of spades, can be played; the jack and then the 4 come free only as the cards above them are played.

Side by side

Turn 1Turn 3
Cards per turn of the stockOneThree
Playable card of the wasteThe top cardThe top card, then the ones it covered
Cards within reach on a pass of 24 where nothing is playedAll 248: every third card
Pass limits found in rule setsNone, three passes or oneNone or three passes
Deals winnable with every card known90.48%81.95%

The last row comes from the study by Charlie Blake and Ian Gent, which solved a very large number of random deals by computer. It measures “thoughtful” Klondike, where the player knows where every card is, with no limit on passes and with cards allowed back from the foundations. Real games, where the face-down cards are unknown, are won less often, so these figures are a ceiling for them rather than a forecast.

Why three cards at a time is harder

Most of the stock is out of reach

A fresh stock after the deal holds 24 cards. Number them 1 to 24 from the top. In Turn 1 you can stop at any of them. In Turn 3, if you play nothing from the waste, the cards that land on top are numbers 3, 6, 9 and so on up to 24. That is eight cards out of 24, and the other sixteen can only be reached by playing the card that covers them first.

Playing a card moves the others

The groups of three are not fixed. Suppose that on the first pass you play card 6 when it shows. The waste now holds 23 cards, and on the next pass they are dealt as 1-2-3, 4-5-7, 8-9-10, 11-12-13 and so on, ending with 23-24. The cards on top are now 3, 7, 10, 13, 16, 19, 22 and 24: almost every one is a card you could not reach before. Each card you take from the waste changes which cards the next pass offers, so in Turn 3 it pays to think about the stock as much as about the tableau.

The penalty grows with every extra card

Blake and Gent did not stop at three. With every card known and no limit on passes, they found that the share of winnable deals falls as the number of cards per turn rises: about 90.5% when drawing one, 88.6% when drawing two, 81.9% when drawing three, 69.3% when drawing four and 53.4% when drawing five. The step from two to three costs far more than the step from one to two.

How pass limits change each mode

Wikipedia lists five common ways to deal the stock, and they pair the draw size with a limit on passes:

  • three cards at a time, with no limit on passes;
  • three cards at a time, with three passes;
  • one card at a time, with three passes;
  • one card at a time, with a single pass, playing each card if possible;
  • one card at a time, with no limit on passes.

The limit matters differently in each mode. In Turn 1 with no limit, the stock never hides anything for long: every card comes round again. A single pass, as in the casino version, turns Turn 1 into a much harsher game, because a card you skip is lost for good. In Turn 3 with no limit, the real limit is progress. If you go through the whole stock without playing a single card and nothing has changed on the tableau, the next pass shows exactly the same cards. Unless a move on the tableau opens something new, the game is stuck.

Which one should you play?

  • Learning the game: start with Turn 1. Every card of the stock is in reach on every pass, so when a game is lost it is easier to see where it went wrong.
  • Wanting a challenge: Turn 3 rewards planning. You remember where cards lie in the stock and decide when taking a card from the waste helps more than it hurts.
  • Comparing results: keep your wins in the two modes apart. A win rate in Turn 3 cannot be compared with one in Turn 1, and neither can be compared across different pass limits.

Microsoft Solitaire, the version that made Klondike famous, offered both. Everything the two modes share is in the rules of Klondike, and tips for playing both are in solitaire strategy.

Play Klondike now

Deal a game in your browser: Turn 1 Klondike (draw one) or Turn 3 Klondike (draw three).

Read next

Sources