Klondike Solitaire - less than 3 cards in the stock?

Question

In standard Klondike solitaire (deal-3 Klondike), you deal 3 cards at a time from the stock to the waste. What if only 1 or 2 cards are left in the stock?

Answer 1

you deal out the cards up to three. If there are less than three you just deal out those cards. Use what you can. And then put them in the discard pile and start over.

If those are the only cards you have left including the rest of the discard pile then you might be in a lose scenario.

Answer 2

The stock/waste rules of deal-3 Klondike are as follows:

• You can play the topmost waste card to the tableau or foundation if there is a legal place to move it.
• If there are 3 or more cards in the stock, you can deal 3 cards from the stock to the waste, maintaining their order.
• If there are less than 3 cards in the stock, you can only deal all of the remaining cards to the waste, maintaining their order.
• If there are no cards left in the stock, you can return the waste cards to the stock maintaining their order ("normal" deal-3 klondike lets you do this as many times as you like).

Edit: As suggested, here are some links to various papers which describe the rules of Klondike:

• The Winnability of Klondike Solitaire and Many Other Patience Games: Blake & Gent 2019 - specifically Section 2 on page 2-3
• Constraint Models for Relaxed Klondike Variants: Dang et al 2024 - Specifically Section 2 Stock Relaxations bullet 1 on page 3
• Solitaire: Man Versus Machine: Yan et al, 2004: Specifically Section 2 on page 3. Note that the variant of Klondike presented in this paper is different to that presented in most other literature (as quoted by Bjarnason, Tadepalli & Fern 2007 Searching Solitaire in Real Time), as partial tableau moves are disallowed. Yan et al. doesn't specifically name the "stock" ("the pile" in bullet 4 of page 3), and what I have called "waste", they name "talon" (bullet 5 of page 3).