Turn 1 deals one card from the stock at a time, so every card in the stock can be played on every pass. Turn 3 deals three and only the top one is playable, which hides most of the stock and makes the game much harder. Play Turn 1 for a relaxed game you will usually get to the end of; play Turn 3 for the classic game, where a win means something.
Both are the same Klondike Solitaire — seven columns, four foundations, one stock. Only the way the stock is turned changes, and you can switch between them at the top of the game.
What actually changes
In Turn 1, each click turns over one card from the stock onto the waste. Whatever you do not play, you will see again next time round, in the same order. Every card in the stock is reachable.
In Turn 3, each click turns over three cards and only the last one is on top. To reach the card under it you have to play the top one first. Cards that sit second or third in a packet are only playable if you take enough cards off the waste to change which cards land on top next time — and if you take none, the stock comes round in exactly the same packets forever.
| Turn 1 | Turn 3 | |
|---|---|---|
| Cards turned per click | 1 | 3, top one playable |
| Stock cards reachable | all of them | every third, unless you play from the waste |
| Deals winnable with every card known | about 90.5% | about 81.9% |
| Deals this site's hint wins by itself | 45.6% | 12.4% |
| Points lost for going through the stock again | 100 | 20 |
The winnable figures are from Charlie Blake and Ian Gent's Solvitaire program at the University of St Andrews. The hint figures we measured on this game, over 2,000 deals of each mode. The full picture of which deals can be won is in its own article.
Why Turn 3 is so much harder
The gap between the two rows of winnable deals — about 90% against 82% — understates it. What matters for a real player is how often you can find the win, and in Turn 3 the stock is half hidden. You are planning around cards you cannot reach yet and, unless you change the packets, never will.
Our hint makes the point bluntly: playing exactly the same way, it wins nearly half of Turn 1 deals and one in eight Turn 3 deals. The cards are not harder; the information is.
Here is how a card gets stuck. Say the stock is 24 cards and the red eight you need is the second card of the fourth packet. Every time you go round, the fourth packet lands with some other card on top, and the eight is underneath it. Unless you play a card from the waste before you get there, the packets never change and the eight never comes up. In Turn 1 the same eight would simply appear on its own, once per pass.
How scoring treats the two modes
The score here follows the classic Windows rules: ten points for each card put home, five for each card played from the waste to the table and for each card turned over, and a bonus for winning that shrinks with time. Going through the stock again costs 100 points in Turn 1 and 20 in Turn 3. That is fair: in Turn 1 a second pass shows you nothing you have not already seen, while in Turn 3 it is often the only way forward.
Switching between them
The mode is chosen for a whole deal. Switching from Turn 1 to Turn 3, or back, in the middle of a game starts a new deal in the mode you picked — the stock is dealt differently, so a half-played deal cannot carry over. Your unfinished game is not lost by closing the tab, though: it waits for you, in its own mode, until you deal again.
If you are learning, a good way in is to play a few deals of Turn 1 until you stop missing moves on the table, then move to Turn 3. Nearly everything carries over: turning hidden cards over first, keeping kings for empty columns, and not rushing cards home. What Turn 3 adds is planning around the stock.
Which one should you play?
- Play Turn 1 if you are new to Klondike, want to finish most games, or are playing for a few quiet minutes.
- Play Turn 3 if you know the game, like a deal that fights back, or want the classic version.
- Switch to Turn 1 for a while if Turn 3 has stopped being fun — the moves you learn carry straight over.
Playing Turn 3 better
Count the stock before your first pass, and notice which cards come up on top of each packet. Taking a single card off the waste shifts every packet after it by one, which brings different cards to the top next time — so a waste card you do not need right away can still be worth playing to change what comes up. There is more in how to win more often.
Whichever you choose, the deal is saved if you close the tab, and undo goes back as far as you like. See all the solitaire games for Spider and FreeCell too.
For what it's worth, I build on Turn 3 and play on Turn 1.