Alaska: a stockless deal built in suit, up or down
Alaska starts where Yukon does: seven columns, 21 face-down cards, the rest face up, and no stock anywhere. Nothing is drawn, so the question at the heart of this site, how much does a three-card draw cost you, never comes up. What changes is how cards join up. In Alaska a card goes on another of the same suit, one rank higher or lower, and any face-up card moves with everything on top of it.
For a solver that sees the hidden cards, Alaska is one of the more winnable games on the site: it solved 75.60% of 500 deals (95% range 71.65%–79.16%), proved 7.20% impossible (5.25%–9.81%) and left 17.20% undecided (14.14%–20.76%). Compare Klondike Turn 3 on our home page, where the same kind of solver solved 66.2% of 1,000 deals and proved 9.5% impossible. Without a stock, the deal and your planning decide the game.
At a glance: Alaska on this site
| Measure | Result | 95% range | Deals |
|---|---|---|---|
| Solved (thoughtful solver, sees hidden cards) | 75.60% | 71.65–79.16% | 500 |
| Proven impossible | 7.20% | 5.25–9.81% | 500 |
| Undecided within the budget | 17.20% | 14.14–20.76% | 500 |
| Simple look-ahead bot, sees only face-up cards: won | 1.51% | 1.29–1.77% | 10,000 |
| Bot moves in won games | 110.90 moves | 108.90–112.90 | 151 wins |
| Cards on foundations at the end (all games) | 5.07 cards | 4.92–5.21 | 10,000 |
| Aces starting face down (of 4) | 1.61 Aces | 1.59–1.63 | 10,000 |
The solver knows every hidden card, so its figure is a ceiling: the winnable share lies between 75.6% and 92.8%. The bot is a very weak floor, and a patient human with Undo will do far better than 1.51%. Alaska is not covered by the published study of Blake and Gent (2026).
Hidden cards instead of a hidden stock
In Klondike Turn 3, the cards you cannot reach are in the stock, locked under the top card of each group of three. In Alaska they are on the table, under the face-down cards. Our bot's results hint at how the two differ. In Turn 3, deals with no Ace face down went better (12.29%, 10.55%–14.27%, 1,196 deals) than those with two or more (10.14%, 9.36%–10.98%, 5,333 deals). In Alaska our bot actually won slightly more often with 2+ Aces face down (1.91%, 1.57%–2.31%, 5,352 deals) than with 0–1 (1.05%, 0.80%–1.39%, 4,648 deals). The bot is weak, so read this only as a sign that buried Aces are not the main problem here.
Alaska rules on this site
- Deal: seven columns of 1, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11 cards; the last five of each column (after the first) face up.
- Building: same suit, one rank higher or one rank lower.
- Moving: any face-up card moves with all the cards on top of it.
- Empty columns: Kings only.
- Foundations: up by suit from Ace to King.
- No stock: nothing to draw or redeal.
Playing Alaska
Use both directions
A 6 of spades can sit on the 7 or the 5 of spades. Look for the direction that frees a face-down card.
Keep suits together
Because building is by suit, a column holding one suit is easy to clear to the foundation later.
Turn over hidden cards
All the uncertainty is under the face-down cards. Choose moves that reveal one.
Make room for Kings
Only Kings fill empty columns. Empty one when a King is ready to lead a useful pile.
Explore with Undo
Seven deals in ten or more are winnable with full knowledge. Backing up and trying another line is how you find them.
Turn 1, Turn 3 or no draw at all
For reference, here is what the draw rule does in Klondike on this site. Our simple bot, which sees only face-up cards and never undoes, won 42.3% of 10,000 Turn 1 deals (41.3%–43.3%) and 10.6% of 10,000 Turn 3 deals (10.0%–11.2%). In the games it did win, it went through the stock 2.34 times at Turn 1 and 3.81 times at Turn 3. Alaska takes the stock away and puts those cards on the table instead. Our Alaska bot won only 1.51%, but it is a weak program, and we have no measure of how people do here compared with Turn 3.
Without a stock, the chance a deal gives you is fixed the moment the cards land. Nothing you turn later can help or hurt, so every decision you make on the table counts for more.
Playing on solitaire-turn-3.com
Alaska is free in any current browser on computer, tablet or phone, with no account. Hint, unlimited Undo, Restart and Auto Play are included, along with zoom, fullscreen, drag or tap moves, a counter for wins, time and moves, and sound and table-color settings. For the same layout with a stock, play Solitaire Draw 3.
How the figures were made
The solitaire-turn-3.com team ran these tests in September 2026 on this site's rules, in Python 3.11 with the standard library only.
- Rules from the code: as listed above.
- Numbered deals: seeds 1 to 10,000 for the bot, 1 to 500 for the solver.
- Look-ahead bot: searches 300 positions per turn over visible cards only, never undoes.
- Thoughtful solver: a depth-first search that sees face-down cards, up to 50,000 positions per deal, no automatic moves.
- No published check: Alaska does not appear in Blake and Gent (2026).
- 95% ranges: Wilson score intervals for shares, normal intervals for averages.
Claude, an AI assistant by Anthropic, helped write and review the code and draft this page. Every figure comes from running the code, and the team checked them.
Alaska questions
How often can Alaska be won?
With full knowledge, between 75.6% and 92.8% of deals. What a real player wins was not measured.
Is there a Turn 3 version?
No. There is no stock, so no draw setting.
What is similar?
Yukon uses the same deal with alternating colors. All games are on the games page; articles are on the blog.
By Admin, solitaire-turn-3.com (Forty Media). Research run September 2026.