I started playing Spider Solitaire again and decided to record my results,
just to see what was happening. The results for 50 games are shown below
and
are somewhat interesting.
Spider Solitaire is frequently part of the MS Windows game package but if
you don't have it, you can see what it's all about at:
http://www.funny-games.biz/spider-solitaire.html
The game is played with two decks; when you get a stack of all one suit,
from king to ace, that pack goes off the playing field up to the scoring
area. You therefore have a maximum score of 8 packs. I played the medium
game, half hearts and half spades.
Results:
Packs
Scored Occurrences
0 20
1 12
2 9
3 2
4 3
5 0
6 0
7 0
8 4
The lack of 5-6-7 score games seemed weird at first but after thinking
about
it for a while, it seems more reasonable. For a score of 7, I don't
believe
there is any way to have one pack left without being able to score. There
would have to be 13 cards, all the same suit, from A to K. With 10 cards
playable, there would always be plays to move one and create an open row,
allowing you to uncover another not currently playable and so on,
completing the game with a score of 8.
Scores of 5 or 6 should be theoretically possible. For 5, three packs are
left on the playing field. If the 10 cards showing are
2-2-4-4-6-6-8-8-10-10, with the second rank all not showing, the game
stops
there. For 6, it stops at 2-2-2-4-4-4-6-6-6-8, next rank all not showing.
There are other dead-end positions but like the ones just shown, they are
so
unlikely to occur in the normal playing of the game that I'm not surprised
that I didn't get any in only 50 plays.
Is it possible to come up with a theoretical distribution of game results
or
is the game too complicated for that?
Paul
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