Solitaire & Its Variants

By Author: Rafal Tyler
Total Articles: 5
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‘Gaming’ has always been an activity that humanity has enjoyed, just as humanity painted walls of caves from the dawn intellect, humanity has always played games! Playing a game requires the complete attention of the person engaged with it and games can of course be played competitively or through the use of cards, tiles or these days with computers can also be played alone.



Computer games allow players to engage in their favorite fantasies whether that is rally driving, race driving, being a secret agent, war games or strategy games. Card games on the other hand are a more limited abstract level of gaming available to players, but are the fundamental beginning of modern computer gaming today. It is no surprise that today, that one of the more popular types of computer games are solitaire games which can be played online. These are card games that are translated to the computer and allow players to enjoy them. Modern solitaire games also include elements that are very difficult to achieve with a normal deck of cards, for example being able to undo moves and interesting rule variations that are difficult ...
... to recreate physically.



Different versions of solitaire include Pyramid solitaire, Classic solitaire, Golf solitaire, Tripeaks and FreeCell. FreeCell solitaire is an exceedingly popular version of solitaire which is a card game played with a standard deck of 52 cards.



In FreeCell, cards on the tableau are built by alternate colours rather than built by suit In the June 1968 edition of “Scientific American”, Martin Gardner in his article “Mathematical Games” documented an another version or a rather similar version of FreeCell solitaire today called Baker’s Dozen which is dated as far back as the 1920’s, making FreeCell solitaire one of the oldest card games that is still being played. NP-Completeness plays mathematical part in FreeCell game; no algorithm more effective than a brute-force search algorithm exists that can find solutions for arbitrary generalized FreeCell configurations.



There are as many as 8*10^67 unique deals because there are 52 cards leading to 52 factorials (52!). There are even some computer programs designed by FreeCell solitaire enthusiasts. Don Woods wrote one such program in 1997, Tom Holroyd made “Pat solve” is yet another computer program that uses atomic moves to automatically solve FreeCell. FreeCell solitaire has been a popular solitaire game years and it continues to receive newer versions allowing it to continue to gain popularity and longtime enthusiasts. With so many variants and the possibility to evolve rules and create new variants Solitaire will only continue to gain followers, especially as once a person has played one solitaire game they are likely to play others.



Freecell Solitaire - A well known Solitaire game that requires more skill than luck.