Triple Solitaire
Added 02/2026
Triple Solitaire: The Massive Three-Deck Marathon
By Martin Petroff
If you have mastered classic Klondike and find that a standard 52-card deck simply doesn't last long enough to satisfy your card-playing cravings, it is time to upgrade your real estate. Triple Solitaire (often called Triple Klondike) is exactly what it sounds like: a supersized, sprawling marathon of a game played with three full decks. With a whopping 156 cards in play, an expanded 13-column tableau, and 12 foundation piles to fill, this variation turns a quick five-minute coffee break game into an epic, highly strategic puzzle. It requires a massive screen—or a very big dining room table—and a serious amount of focus to keep track of the sheer volume of cards in play.
How to Play
The core mechanics are identical to standard Klondike, so the learning curve is practically zero. The real challenge comes from managing the massive scale of the board and keeping a close eye on your 12 different foundation piles.
The Objective: Your goal is to move all 156 cards into the 12 "Foundation" piles at the top of the board. You must build these piles by suit (three piles for Hearts, three for Spades, etc.), starting from the Ace and ascending all the way up to the King.
The Setup (The Massive Tableau):
Shuffle three standard 52-card decks together (156 cards total).
Deal the cards into 13 columns from left to right.
The setup follows the classic stair-step pattern: Column 1 gets 1 card face up. Column 2 gets 1 face down, 1 face up. Column 3 gets 2 face down, 1 face up.
Continue this exact pattern all the way to Column 13, which will receive 12 cards face down and 1 card face up.
This massive setup uses 91 cards. The remaining 65 cards form your face-down Stockpile.
Above the tableau, reserve space for your 12 Foundation piles.
How to Play:
Building the Columns: Just like standard Klondike, you build down the tableau columns in descending order and alternating colors (for example, placing a red 9 onto a black 10).
Moving Stacks: You can move entire sequences of face-up cards together, provided they are correctly stacked in alternating colors.
Revealing Cards: When you expose a face-down card at the bottom of any of the 13 columns, flip it face up.
Empty Columns: With 13 columns in play, you will eventually clear a few out. If a column becomes completely empty, you can only move a King (or a sequence starting with a King) into that space.
The Draw: When you are stuck, draw from the Stockpile to the Waste pile. You can play this as a forgiving "Draw 1" or a more traditional "Draw 3" depending on how much of a challenge you want.
The Triple Strategy: Because you have three of every single card, you have incredible flexibility. If you need a black 8, you have six of them in the deck (three Spades, three Clubs). However, this also means you must be careful not to bury crucial low cards under massive, 15-card-long tableau sequences!