Diplomat Solitaire: 72 stock cards, one at a time, one pass

Take the draw rule from our home page and flip each part of it. Klondike Turn 3 lets you go through its 24-card stock as often as you like, three cards at a time. Diplomat hands you a 72-card stock one card at a time, and never lets you go through it again. Every stock card you turn is playable, but the waste is a one-way street: once a card is covered, it only comes back if you clear what is on top of it.

How does that play out? Our look-ahead bot, which sees the face-up cards but not the stock order, won 47.9% of 2,000 deals (95% range 45.7%–50.0%). That is a floor, not a promise, but it sits well above the 10.6% (10.0%–11.2%) the simpler Klondike bot managed at Turn 3 over 10,000 deals, and close to its 42.3% (41.3%–43.3%) at Turn 1. The two bots are different programs, so treat that as context, not a contest.

At a glance: Diplomat

We ran no solver for Diplomat, and Blake and Gent (2026) do not cover it, so there is no figure for how many deals can be won with perfect play. Stock passes are not listed because there is only one.

One card, one pass: how much does it matter?

At Turn 3, the Klondike stock is a filter that hides two cards in every three; our bot needed 3.81 passes per win (3.73–3.90), against 2.34 at Turn 1 (2.32–2.36). Diplomat has no filter, since every card turns up alone, but it has no second chance either. The whole game becomes a question of what to do with each stock card as it appears: play it, or let it be buried in the waste.

Whether a redeal, or a three-card draw, would change Diplomat's chances we cannot say. We simulated only the site's rule and never varied the stock, so any estimate would be a guess. What we can say is that a win is long: about 351 moves, including the 72 stock turns.

Diplomat rules on this site

• Cards: 104 (two decks), eight foundations.
• Table: eight columns of four cards, all face up.
• Stock: 72 cards, turned one at a time to the waste, no redeal.
• Building: down in any suit, one card at a time.
• Empty columns: any card may fill one.
• Win: all 104 cards on the foundations, Ace to King by suit.

Playing a one-pass stock

Think before you turn

Every turn of the stock may bury the card beneath it for good. Make every useful table move before you reveal the next card.

Keep landing spots open

Since builds ignore suit, almost any card can go on a card one rank higher. Keep a spread of high cards exposed so stock cards have somewhere to go.

Empty columns are precious

With single-card moves only, an empty column is your one way to shuffle cards around. Do not fill it with a card that could have waited in the waste.

Watch the waste depth

A tall waste pile is dead weight. If cards you will need are piling up there, it is time to create room on the table.

Start with the Aces

In about half of deals (49.2%) an Ace is playable at once. Take it; foundations are the only place cards leave for good.

Diplomat next to the Klondike draws

Put the three stock rules side by side. Klondike Turn 1: 24 cards, one at a time, unlimited laps; our bot won 42.3% and used 2.34 passes per win. Klondike Turn 3: the same 24 cards, three at a time, unlimited laps; 10.6% and 3.81 passes. Diplomat: 72 cards, one at a time, one lap; 47.9% with a different bot. Those are three different player programs, so no single number here proves which rule is kinder.

What the comparison does suggest is that the number of laps is not the whole story. Diplomat gives you only one lap, yet a bot still wins nearly half its games, because every stock card is live the moment it turns and because any-suit building gives it many places to land. Turn 3 gives unlimited laps but makes most stock cards unreachable on any single lap. For your own play, that means Diplomat rewards care with each card, while Turn 3 rewards thinking about the order of the whole stock.

The bot also got most of the deck home even in lost games: 76.0 of 104 cards on average.

What the table figures tell you

Two of the numbers above describe the start and the end of a typical game. At the start, an Ace is playable straight from the 32 face-up table cards in 49.2% of deals (47.0%–51.3%, 2,000 deals); in the other half you will be turning stock cards before anything reaches a foundation. At the end, even counting lost games, the bot had 76.0 cards home on average. Losses in Diplomat, in other words, tend to come late, when the last few stock cards fail to connect, rather than early.

Playing on solitaire-turn-3.com

Diplomat is free in any current browser on computer, tablet or phone, with no account and nothing to install. Hint, unlimited Undo, Restart and Auto Play are included, plus zoom and fullscreen, drag or tap moves, a count of wins, time and moves, and settings for sound and table color.

How the figures were made

The solitaire-turn-3.com team ran these tests in September 2026 on the Diplomat rules read from this site's game code.

1. Rebuilt in Python 3.11, standard library only.
2. 2,000 numbered deals, seeds 1 to 2,000.
3. Bot: a 300-position look-ahead over table and waste moves. It does not know the stock order and turns the next card when nothing improves its score.
4. 95% ranges: Wilson score intervals for percentages, normal intervals for averages.
5. Not done: no solver, no published comparison, no stock variants.

Claude, an AI assistant by Anthropic, helped write and review the code and draft this text. It produced no figures; the numbers come from running the code, and the team checked them.

Diplomat questions

Can I go through the stock again?

No. For a stock you can recycle, play Klondike Turn 3 or Solitaire Double.

Is 47.9% my chance?

No. It is what a program with no plan beyond 300 positions and no undo achieved. Careful players with Undo should do better; we have no human figure.

What is similar?

Forty Thieves also has a one-pass, one-card stock and two decks, but builds in suit. See the games page and the blog.

By Admin, solitaire-turn-3.com (Forty Media). Research run September 2026.