On Sun, 4 May 2008, Pavel314 wrote:
> 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:
>
Oh baloney, I use cards. What's baloney about Microsoft**** is that it
doesn't have the 9, 7, 6 and 5 cards across versions nor the unique 8 and
4 across Box Spiter Solitary
> 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.
Does the pack go off the playing field immediately by stupid software or
do
you have the option of removing when you wish? The rules allow removal of
a complete suit upon the player's choice. My experience has shown that
it can be of much value to not remove the complete suit are once.
> 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.
>
Correct.
> 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.
>
You've got 5 and 6 switched.
> Is it possible to come up with a theoretical distribution of game
> results or is the game too complicated for that?
>
Continue your sampling. Interesting point you bring up.
With the seven or less across, a loss with 5 out does occure.
Never though about it with 10 or 9 across. I'll give it some
experimential thought, so keep in touch.
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