Klondike Draw Three Solitaire
How to play Klondike Draw Three
Klondike is a one-deck solitaire game with seven tableau columns of mostly face-down cards, a stock turned onto a waste pile, and four foundations built up by suit from Ace to King.
Turn three at a time, and only the top one is in play.
About Klondike Draw Three
Klondike Draw Three is Klondike with the stock turned three cards at a time onto the waste, where only the top card is in play.
Cards come off the stock in packets of three, so a card buried in a packet can only be reached by playing the ones above it. Each time you turn the waste back into the stock, you lose 20 points.
If you play no card from the waste during a pass, the next pass turns up exactly the same packets. Play even one waste card and the cards after it are grouped differently next time, so new cards come to the top. When fewer than three cards are left in the stock, the last turn takes what remains.
Use that deliberately: if the card you need keeps landing in the middle of a packet, play a waste card earlier in the pass to change the grouping. Recycling costs only 20 points here, so going through the stock several times is normal. Before taking a waste card just because it fits, ask whether it would break up packets that are working for you.
Turning three at a time makes deals harder. The solver behind Hint and Winnable proved 67 of 100 fresh Draw Three deals winnable and 9 of them lost, where turning one card at a time it proved 82.
Undo takes the waste back with the board, packets included, so you can play a different card early in a pass and see how the next pass groups the stock. Draw Three also has a daily board of its own, separate from the one-card daily, and it is dealt with Winnable on as well.
The goal of Klondike
Move all 52 cards onto the four foundations, one for each suit, building each from Ace up to King.
How to set up Klondike
One deck is dealt into seven tableau columns holding one to seven cards, with only the last card of each column face up. The remaining 24 cards form the stock.
Klondike rules
In the tableau, build down in alternating red and black: a red Seven goes on a black Eight. You can move a face-up card together with all the cards on top of it. Only a King, or a run headed by a King, can fill an empty column.
When a move uncovers a face-down card, it turns face up. Turn cards from the stock onto the waste; the top waste card can go to the tableau or a foundation. Once the stock is empty, the waste turns back into the stock: as often as you like in Klondike and Draw Three, twice in Las Vegas Solitaire Turn 3, and never in Las Vegas Solitaire. A card on a foundation may also come back down to the tableau.
Drag a card or a run to move it, or click it to send it to its best legal place: a foundation if one takes it, otherwise a tableau column. With Autoplay switched off in Settings, a click does nothing and only a drag moves cards.
The full Klondike guide, with strategy tips and common questions