This post originally appeared on the old site on December 14, 2004.
In the course of events I recently came across this site: Solitaire Strategy Guide.
This is an interesting page about strategy for solitaire, specifically for the game Klondike, which is referred to on the page as "solitaire", as if it is the only solitaire game (this is common). Klondike is, of course, the solitaire game that is bundled with Windows.
The 9 rules are interesting and are listed by order of importance (meaning the first rules always take precedence over the lower rules). I agree with most of these rules, although the terminology is a little weird.
The first two rules are straightforward. The 3rd rule:
3. When faced with a choice, always make the play or transfer that frees (or allows a play that frees) the downcard from the biggest pile of downcards.
In general this is true, but I wonder if it is always the case. What if the first downcard in the smaller pile of downcards allows you to make more plays to uncover more downcards than the other card? It can happen. Of course, the only way to really know is to use undo and try both alternatives. This brings up the question of whether in strategy rules you can be allowed to check each alternative - strictly speaking, that's probably not allowed for a strategy but in practice it is what everyone does (at least, if you are playing with a game like Pretty Good Solitaire that has multiple undo).
In rule 7, what he refers to as "next card protection" is actually what is known as "safe autoplay", which has been in Pretty Good Solitaire since forever. Safe Autoplay means that you don't move up cards to the foundations if that card may still be needed in the tableau as a spot to park a lower ranked card on. It's the situation when, for example, you could play the 4 of Hearts to the foundations but the 3 of Clubs hasn't come out yet and there's no place to put it if it did. In that case, you want to leave the 4 of Hearts in the tableau so you can play the 3 of Clubs on it when it comes out. When AutoPlay is turned on, Pretty Good Solitaire will not automatically play the 4 of Hearts up to the foundations in this situation, which confuses some people who don't realize the importance of this. I get an email or two every week about this from people who think that the AutoPlay in Pretty Good Solitaire has a bug in it because it isn't playing everything up.
The most interesting thing about these rules is what he called "smooth". It took me awhile to understand what he meant by this (you have to read the part on the left side and continuing below the rules). I think a better term for this would be "flushing the pile" (borrowing the word flush in its poker sense). A pile would be flushed if the cards of the same color are also all of the same suit. If you think about it, it is clearly desirable that the cards in an alternate color pile be flushed as much as possible. It will make it much easier for the pile to move up to the foundations if this is the case.
What I don't understand is why he limits rule 8 to cards of rank 5,6,7, or 8. It's clear why you wouldn't want these restrictions on 2s or 3s, but why not include 4 and why stop at 8? I'm not clear on the reasoning behind why this rule is the way it is.
I've tried playing these rules on the game Gold Rush, my favorite Klondike type game, and they seem to work well. Although with Gold Rush, you have to make some modification for the fact that there are only 3 redeals. On the 3rd redeal, you will never see a card in the waste again so you had better play it if you can, rule 8 notwithstanding.
Happy solitaire playing!
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