"William Elliot" <marsh@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote in message
news:Pine.BSI.4.58.0805042215400.14008@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> 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
When you're playing at the office, it's much easier to click off a window
when someone walks in as opposed to trying to hide an arrangement of 104
cards covering your desk. What you lose in flexibility is made up in job
security. It would be interesting to see what impact the introduction of
software solitaire has had on physical playing card production and sales.
>> 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.
They all fly up to the top immediately on completion of the suit. I'm
curious; under what conditions would it be a good strategy to leave a
completed suit on the table? Doing so either blocks the card below from
being put into play or, if there's nothing beneath the king, occupies an
otherwise empty row which could be useful in play. Since nothing can be
put
on the ace, I can't see where leaving the completed suit on the table
would
ever be an advantage.
>> 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.
Right.
>> 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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