Face Up Solitaire Turn 3
Added 02/2026
Face Up Solitaire Turn 3: The Ultimate Open-Board Challenge
By Martin Petroff
If standard Face Up Solitaire is a strategic puzzle where you can plan your moves five steps in advance, Face Up Solitaire Turn 3 (or Open Klondike Draw 3) introduces a brutal ticking clock to that perfect planning. You still get the massive advantage of seeing every single card in the 28-card tableau right from the start. However, by forcing you to draw from your stockpile three cards at a time, the game strips away your safety net. You know exactly what you need to do on the board, but you are entirely at the mercy of your restricted stockpile to give you the missing pieces. It requires the deep foresight of FreeCell combined with the meticulous deck-cycling memory of traditional Turn 3.
How to Play
The Rules
The board looks exactly like standard Face Up Solitaire, but the strict three-card draw mechanic completely changes how you approach your strategy.
The Objective: Your goal is to move all 52 cards into the four "Foundation" piles at the top right of the board. You must build these piles by suit, starting with the Ace and ascending in order all the way up to the King.
The Setup (The Face-Up Tableau):
Shuffle a standard 52-card deck.
Deal 28 cards into seven columns to form the traditional stair-step shape (Column 1 gets 1 card, Column 2 gets 2 cards, up to Column 7 with 7 cards).
The Open Twist: Every single card in this 28-card tableau is dealt completely face up, overlapping so you can see every value and suit.
The remaining 24 cards form your face-down Stockpile.
How to Play:
Building the Columns: You build down the tableau columns in descending order and alternating colors (for example, placing a red 8 onto a black 9).
Moving Stacks: You can move entire sequences of cards together, provided they are perfectly stacked in descending order and alternating colors.
The "Buried" Rule: You can see every card, but you cannot magically extract a card from the middle of a pile. You must still physically move the cards resting on top of it to free it up.
Empty Columns: If you completely clear one of your seven columns, you can only move a King (or a valid sequence starting with a King) into that empty space.
The Turn 3 Draw: When you are stuck on the board, you must draw three cards at a time from your Stockpile, placing them face-up in a Waste pile.
The Top Card Rule: You can only play the top, fully exposed card of the three you just drew. The two cards beneath it are locked until the top card is played.
Deck Cycling: When your Stockpile runs out, flip your Waste pile over (without shuffling) to form a new Stockpile. Because you are drawing in threes, the deck order remains static. If you cycle the entire deck without playing a card, you will hit a dead end! You must carefully decide when to pull a card to shift the order of your next cycle.