Klondike (solitaire)
A solitaire family,[2] as well as one of the most challenging in widespread play.[3] It has spawned numerous variants including Batsford, Easthaven, King Albert, Thumb and Pouch, Somerset or Usk and Whitehead, as well as the American variants of the games, Agnes and Westcliff. The distinguishing feature of all variants is a triangular layout of the tableau, building in ascending sequence and packing in descending order.[4]
NameIn the U.S. and Canada, it is so well known that the term "Solitaire", in the absence of qualifiers, typically refers to Klondike.[5] Equally in the UK, it is often just known as "Patience".[5] Elsewhere the game is known as American Patience.[6] Historically Klondike was also called Canfield in America, perhaps because it was a casino game at the Richard Canfield even though Canfield himself called his game "Klondike".[8]
HistoryAccording to Tung (2015), the game may well have been named "Klondike" after the Demon elsewhere in the world.[11]
In the 1913 edition of the so-called Official Rules of Card Games,[a] Seven-Card Klondike has become Klondike, with the modification that the pack is run through one card at a time instead of three, and the original Klondike is now being called Canfield.[12] Klondike's inclusion in Microsoft Windows in the 1990s contributed significantly to its current popularity. It is considered the most popular version of solitaire.[13] RulesKlondike is played with a standard 52-card deck, without Jokers. After shuffling, a tableau of seven fanned piles of cards is laid from left to right. From left to right, each pile contains one more card than the last. The first and left-most pile contains a single upturned card, the second pile contains two cards, and so forth. The topmost card of each pile is turned face up.
The remaining cards form the stock and are placed facedown at the upper left of the layout. The four built down by alternate colors . Every face-up card in a partial pile, or a complete pile, can be moved, as a unit, to another tableau pile on the basis of its highest card. Any empty piles can be filled with a King, or a pile of cards with a King. The aim of the game is to build up four stacks of cards starting with Ace and ending with King, all of the same suit, on one of the four foundations, at which time the player would have won.
There are different ways of dealing the remainder of the deck from the stock to the waste , including the following:
If the player can no longer make any meaningful moves, the game is considered lost. At this point, winning is impossible. Probability of winningThe probability of being able to win a game of Klondike with best-possible play is not known, although Hoyle's Rules of Games suggests the chances of winning as being 1 in 30 games.[14] The inability of theoreticians to precisely calculate these odds has been referred to by mathematician Persi Diaconis as "one of the embarrassments of applied probability".[15] The best information about the winnability of Klondike concerns a modified version of the game called "Thoughtful Solitaire" or "Thoughtful Klondike", in which the location of all 52 cards is known.[16] The probability of winning Thoughtful Klondike (with draw three rules) has been calculated as being approximately 82%, more precisely as having a confidence interval of 81.956% ± 0.096%.[17] Thoughtful Klondike is not quite the same as simply playing with all cards face up, as this would allow an impossible movement of a pile if the top downturned card happened to be in sequence with the upturned card underneath it. Using physical cards, Thoughtful Klondike can be played by peeking at the face-down cards or by dealing the downturned cards face-up but sideways to differentiate them from the tableau piles. With electronic programs Thoughtful Klondike can be played by allowing unlimited use of undos to return to the start if a choice turns out to be unfavorable. Because the only difference between the two games (regular and thoughtful) is the knowledge of card location, all winnable Thoughtful Klondike games will also be winnable in regular Klondike. The win percentage of 82% for Thoughtful Klondike gives an upper bound of 82% on the win percentage of regular Klondike when the location of all cards is unknown. The true probability with best play might be much smaller, because the difference between a right and wrong move cannot be known in advance whenever more than one move is possible, and some cards are still hidden. Ultimately, very little is known about the winnability of regular Klondike. A Klondike-playing AI using Monte Carlo tree search was able to solve up to 35% of randomly generated regular Klondike games,[18] placing a lower bound on the winnability percentage. One experiment found a skilled player could win 189 out of 442 games (43%),[19] but this gives a discrepancy of almost 40% between regular and Thoughtful Klondike. VariantsSingle deckBelow are some single-pack variants of Klondike:
Gambling variantIn some casinos, Klondike is turned into a gambling game, by playing with the rule of dealing cards one at a time and going through the stock once. For example, a player would pay $50 to play, and the house would pay $5 for each card played to the foundations.[21] This form of Klondike is sometimes called Las Vegas Solitaire. Joker SolitaireJoker Solitaire is a variant of Klondike created by Joli Quentin Kansil which adds two jokers that serve as limited wild cards. This adds more skill because players are required to make many calculated decisions.[22] Double SolitaireKlondike has been turned into a two-player game under the name Double Solitaire.[23] Players have their own packs and may not play to each other's tableaus but share their foundations. Players take turns until they are unable to play a card from their talons. The first player to play all 52 cards is the winner. Informally, "Double" Solitaire can be played as a party game with more than 2 players. Computerized versionsDigital versions of Klondike have helped popularize the game and offer advantages over playing with a physical deck. Notable examples of computerized versions include:
Scoring in the Microsoft Windows Solitaire version of Klondike is as follows:[28]
Moving cards directly from the Waste stack to a Foundation scores 10 points. However, if the card is first moved to a Tableau, and then to a Foundation, an extra 5 points are scored making a total of 15. Thus, to score the most points, no cards should be moved directly from the Waste to Foundation. Time also plays a role, if the 'Timed game' option is selected. In this case, 2 points are deducted every 10 seconds. Bonus points are scored using the formula 700,000 ÷ (seconds to finish), if the game takes at least 30 seconds. If the game takes under 30 seconds, no bonus points are awarded. See also
References
NotesLiterature
|