FreeCell Two Decks: 104 cards, eight cells and no pile to turn

If the three-card draw is the villain of Solitaire Turn 3, this game has no villain of that kind. FreeCell Two Decks deals all 104 cards face up into ten columns, gives you eight free cells and eight foundations, and never asks you to turn a stock. There is no Turn 1 or Turn 3 setting, because nothing is drawn. Every card you will ever need is on the table from the first second.

What remains is length. Our solver's first winning line averaged 148.02 moves (95% range 145.91–150.13, over 352 solved deals). Of 400 deals it solved 88.0% (84.45%–90.83%), proved none impossible (0.00%–0.95%), and left 12.0% (9.17%–15.55%) undecided when it reached its limit. Compare that with Klondike Turn 3 on our home page, where a simple bot won 10.6% of 10,000 deals (10.0%–11.2%) against 42.3% at Turn 1: there, the draw decides a lot. Here, the deal and your planning decide everything.

At a glance: FreeCell Two Decks

So the winnable share lies between 88.0% and 100%. Undecided means the search ran out of room, not that the deal is lost. This game is not covered by the published study of Blake and Gent (2026), so we have no outside figure to compare with.

One deck and two, both without a stock

Single-deck FreeCell shares the key feature: no stock, all cards visible. There our solver found wins in 99.68% of 10,000 deals (99.55%–99.77%) after a second, larger search, with first solutions of 62.17 moves (61.93–62.41, 9,913 solved deals). The two searches had different budgets (200,000 then 1,000,000 positions vs 150,000) and very different sample sizes (10,000 vs 400), so the solved shares are not a like-for-like contest. The fair reading: both are near the top, and in neither was a single deal proven lost.

In Klondike, the draw rule alone moves the solver's proven-impossible share from 2.1% at Turn 1 to 9.5% at Turn 3 (1,000 deals each). Games without a stock never pay that price.

Rules on this site

• Cards: two standard decks, 104 cards.
• Deal: ten columns, all face up (four of 11 cards and six of 10).
• Free cells: eight, one card each.
• Foundations: eight, built up by suit from Ace to King.
• Building: down in alternating colors.
• Empty columns: any card may fill them.
• No stock: nothing to draw and nothing to redeal.

Playing a long, open game

Plan in stages

With about 148 moves in a typical first solution, think in chapters: open a column, move the low cards, then build long runs.

Choose between twins

Every card has an identical partner. When a card could go on either of two matching cards, pick the one whose column you want to keep.

Eight cells fill fast

Twice the cells serve twice the cards. In one-deck FreeCell, going from four cells to two cut the solved share to 74.00% (72.40%–75.54%, 3,000 deals). Keep yours empty for as long as you can.

Undo, don't restart

None of our 400 deals was proven impossible. A jam usually means a different line is needed, not a new deal.

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. In FreeCell Two Decks there are no laps at all. The 148 moves of a typical first solution are all table moves, cell moves and foundation moves, which is one reason a two-deck game can feel calmer than a short Turn 3 hand.

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

FreeCell Two Decks is free in any current browser on computer, tablet or phone, with no account. Zoom and fullscreen help with ten columns. Hint, unlimited Undo, Restart and Auto Play are included, along with drag or tap moves, a counter for wins, time and moves, and sound and table-color settings. When you want the draw back in your game, try Solitaire Draw 3 or Klondike Turn 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.

1. Rules from the code: read from the game code of this site, as listed above.
2. Numbered deals: seeds 101 to 500. Seeds 1 to 8 were used to pick one scoring weight, so testing never used them.
3. Best-first solver with safe automatic moves, up to 150,000 positions per deal.
4. Three outcomes: solved, proven impossible or undecided.
5. No published check: two-deck FreeCell does not appear in Blake and Gent (2026).
6. 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.

Questions

Is there a draw-three setting?

No. There is no stock, so there is nothing to draw.

Can every deal be won?

We cannot say for sure: 88.0% were solved, 12.0% were undecided, and none were proven impossible.

Is it harder than Solitaire Turn 3?

Longer, but with far less luck. For Turn 3 our solver proved 9.5% of 1,000 deals impossible; here, none of 400. See all games on the games page and longer articles on the blog.

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