a couple of solitaire card games
Danny Kodicek
games
www.well-spring.co.uk/games/ships.html
www.well-spring.co.uk/games/layered.html
Layered patience is similar to Spider Solitaire on WinME (although I did it
first ;) ) - You move cards red on black, removing cards suitwise from Ace
upwards as in usual Patience. But when you've done all you can, click the
deck of cards on the top left to have a new row dealt on the top of the
current cards. Only complete sets can be moved at any one time (Ie, if there
is a 5 on top of a J, the 5 must be moved before the J is available).
Ships Patience is a bit weirder. It consists of four rows of thirteen cards,
from which the Kings are removed to leave four spaces. You move cards from
their current positions into the spaces, leaving a new space, so that they
are in sequence from the card preceding the space (ie, if you have JH,
space, then you can move QH into the space. (If you roll over a space, the
card which will move will flash. Click the space to move it). Spaces at the
beginning of a row can be filled by any of the four aces (Click on the space
and the four aces will highlight. Click one to select it and move it into
the space). The aim is to get all four suits in order. As there is no
successor to a Queen, the game ends when all four spaces come after queens.
(Actually, you get up to five rounds, depending on the settings in the menu
at the top. If you have more than one round, then when you are finished, all
cards which are not correctly placed are redealt)
Hope that's clear (I really need to put instructions on the page.
Unfortunately, I'm working on other things right now, but anyway, thought
people might enjoy them)
Best
Danny
Dave Gates
This game called "Ships Patience" is very interesting looking. Because at
any point, you have your choice of several possible moves, it APPEARS that
there is strategy to the game, but is there?
Is it winnable? Is it like Freecell where it's ALWAYS winnable?
--
Dave Gates
dave...@linkline.com
"Danny Kodicek" <dra...@well-spring.co.uk> wrote in message
news:WFY_6.67$jB1.5339@wards...
Danny Kodicek
> any point, you have your choice of several possible moves, it APPEARS that
> there is strategy to the game, but is there?
>
> Is it winnable? Is it like Freecell where it's ALWAYS winnable?
It definitely is winnable - at 3 rounds difficulty I win roughly one game in
ten, and I've won one game in one round (out of god knows how many I've
played over the years!). But it's definitely not always winnable (trivially,
you could have a first deal with all spaces behind queens from the start,
and there are vastly more games with just one possible move.
As for strategy, yes, there definitely are strategic ploys to it, it's very
much a thinking game. Working backwards is often useful, also you can see
that particular queens are in dangerous positions and try to move them away.
I tend to play single loops (using one space), until the point when they are
approaching a particular queen, and then switch to another path to try to
move the queen away. After a while you can actually play quite fast in a
semi-random but strategically based way.
What a bunch of vague nonsense. Well, it's hard to describe. But yes, the
strategic aspect is one of the main reasons I enjoy the game (I programmed
it mostly for myself! Playing it on the computer is a lot less hassle than
doing it with real cards)
Danny
Bob Harris
book "150 Ways to Play Solitaire", from Whitman Publishing, 1950.
A web search for "Gaps Solitaire" turned up quite a few hits. It's
mentioned at my favorite card rules site, at
http://www.pagat.com/patience/patience.html
and is aparently also known as Rangoon, Station, Blue-Moon, and Montana
Aces. From there I found a link to rules at
http://web.inter.NL.net/hcc/Rudy.Muller/ranrules.html
For an interesting variant, use two packs of cards. You'll have twice as
many strategic choices; for each move you can move *either* successor card
into a hole. Back in the 70's, I purchased two decks of mini cards just so
I could play this game on a single table.
Bob Harris
Lawrenceville, GA USA
Danny Kodicek
"Bob Harris" <nit...@mindspring.com> wrote in message
news:B7634822.16C91%nit...@mindspring.com...
> I believe that "Ships Patience" is the same as the game called "Gaps" in
the
> book "150 Ways to Play Solitaire", from Whitman Publishing, 1950.
>
> A web search for "Gaps Solitaire" turned up quite a few hits. It's
> mentioned at my favorite card rules site, at
> http://www.pagat.com/patience/patience.html
> and is aparently also known as Rangoon, Station, Blue-Moon, and Montana
> Aces. From there I found a link to rules at
> http://web.inter.NL.net/hcc/Rudy.Muller/ranrules.html
Cool - this is the first time I've seen mention of this game anywhere (I
learned it from a friend at school, and played it obsessively - and yes, I
did try the two-pack variant but found it rather too easy to win). I don't
know where the name 'Ships Patience' comes from - this is what he called it.
I thought it could be called that because it would be an easier game to play
on a ship than one where the cards are laid on top of each other (when
playing it with real cards, you lay them out without overlaps, unlike my
program)
Thanks for the link - I'm actually going to send them a link to the game in
case they're interested.
BTW - anyone recognise the deck?
Danny
Wim Benthem
<dave...@linkline.com> wrote:
>
>This game called "Ships Patience" is very interesting looking. Because at
>any point, you have your choice of several possible moves, it APPEARS that
>there is strategy to the game, but is there?
>
>Is it winnable? Is it like Freecell where it's ALWAYS winnable?
It's not very difficult to make up a Freecell deal that isn't winnable,
whatever the help file says. The probability of it occurring seems very
small.
I will post it in a day or so.
--
Wim Benthem
Malcolm Young
Dave Gates <dave...@linkline.com> wrote in message
news:tjphhe7...@corp.supernews.com...
> Is it winnable? Is it like Freecell where it's ALWAYS winnable?
Freecell game 11982 is not winnable, if you were to play it with a pack of
cards there would be many hands not winnable like games -1 and -2
Regards, Malcolm.
Jonathan G. Dushoff
> Freecell game 11982 is not winnable, if you were to play it with
> a pack of cards there would be many hands not winnable like games
> -1 and -2
I think that the standard Freecell games are randomly generated, and
thus I hypothesize that if you played with a pack of cards you would
find less than 1 game in 10,000 to be unwinnable. Of course, you would
have to be very careful in order to confirm this.
Jonathan Dushoff
Andrew Bolt
> >
> > Is it winnable? Is it like Freecell where it's ALWAYS winnable?
>
> It definitely is winnable - at 3 rounds difficulty I win roughly one game in
> ten, and I've won one game in one round (out of god knows how many I've
> played over the years!). But it's definitely not always winnable (trivially,
> you could have a first deal with all spaces behind queens from the start,
> and there are vastly more games with just one possible move.
Hmm - something odd happened when I tried it. After the third redeal,
I had a space to the right of a 7H, but there was no 8H on the table.
In its place, I had two JH. Is this meant to happen?
Andrew
--
Andrew Bolt, Andre...@arm.com
110 Fulbourn Road, Cambridge, CB1 9NJ, ENGLAND, +44 1223 400650
Danny Kodicek
> I had a space to the right of a 7H, but there was no 8H on the table.
> In its place, I had two JH. Is this meant to happen?
Definitely not. Thanks - I'll look into it. Actually, I've seen the bug
before, I just never got round to fixing it. (it's a long time since I made
this game and the programming is a bit sucky...)
Incidentally, I *think* it happens if you click through too fast - the
system I set up (sucky, like I said) involves setting a variable to indicate
the last hole rolled over, then moving that card, but if it hasn't updated
the variable before you click, you could get the same card moving twice. Not
that you care, but the point is - don't click too fast and it should work
fine.
Danny