I totally agree with StGermain. When I’m engaged in a pointless, time wasting activity that no one gives a hoot about I too hold myself to the highest possible ethical standards.
While I am not that into Freecell myself, I have a dear, dear friend who’s obsessed with the game. She’s working her way through each hand, winning one after the other. Spends about an hour a night on it. I think she’s about 2/3 of the way through.
I’d comment about the oddity of this as a hobby, but I spend my time poring over strangers’ comments on a message board.
There’s also game -2. Very interesting one.
Another ‘cheat’ here, if you are running NT, or 2000 or XP, and you see that you are stuck and will lose, you can fire up task manager, select Processes, then find and kill the freecell process. The game will end without counting the result.
In a row without a reset, probably about 200 hundred or so. I am doing them in order and not advancing until I get the present one worked. (7190) so far. I did not even know you could keep score. Hummmmm… I play more for speed of completion. I even once bought a faster computer so it would process the ‘fly-away’ faster so my times would come down. From enter the game # to entering the next game # … 20-22 seconds is my best… 
I had a streak of about 130 wins in a row once. By the end, it was a relief to finally lose. I couldn’t just turn it on and dick around with 130 games hanging over my head.
Now that I realize it, I haven’t played since. Huh.
Psst:
Here’s a tip.
When you’re about to lose free cell. Close the window, it’ll ask you if you want to give up. Hit control-alt-delete and force close the window. It’ll close and no losses.
Oh, yeah, #1941, I remember it well. Took about 2 weeks to get that one (no, not 2 weeks straight!).
Supposedly every game is winnable. I am embarrassed to admit that my husband and I are testing this theory by working our way through in numerical order (we didn’t know about -1 and -2, ugh!). We are currently on about 16,900 or something. This has been over the course of 2-3 years, now, we’re not that pitiful!
I have no idea, however, what our % or longest streaks are, so I probably shouldn’t even be contributing to this thread but should start one, “I will beat all 33,000 freecell games,” then I could be in the running for most pointless and mundane thread.
Is it possible to win a game without using any of the free cells up top?
I believe that if you can present proof for how to beat old 11982, there are valuable prizes to be won!
I bought a game calle SolSuite. It has about 75 different solitare games, and they report that with Freecell one has about 1 in 3 chances of winning. That’s with one deck.
Love the game! 
slightly off-topic here, but has anyone actually played this with a real deck of cards? I gave up on my 3rd game.
Apparently, if you have XP, the deals possible have gone from 32,000 to 1 million. And the unsolvable deals are:
11982, 146692, 186216, 455889, 495505, 512118, 517776, 781948, 1155215, 1254900, 1387739, 1495908, 1573069, 1631319, 1633509, 1662054, 2022676, 2070322, 2166989, 2167029, 2501890, 2607073, 2681284, 2712622, 2843443, 2852003, 2855691, 2923820, 3163790, 3172889, 3194539, 3217820, 3225183, 3366617, 3376982, 3402716, 3576395, 3595299, 3878212, 3946538, 4055965, 4207758, 4266168, 4269635, 4324282, 4334954, 4440758, 4446355, 4765843, 4863685, 4910222, 5046726, 5050537, 5086829, 5225172, 5244797, 5260342, 5401675, 5478410, 5611185, 5672090, 5817697, 6020049, 6099064, 6100919, 6234527, 6314799, 6332629, 6416342, 6749792, 6761220, 6768658, 6844210, 6895558, 6898316, 7035805, 7261039, 7334559, 7360592, 7400819, 7484159, 7497878, 7530003, 7536454, 7801943, 7814345, 7825750, 7863486, 7887312, 7923001, 7965413, 8000527, 8046431, 8076134, 8104908, 8105324, 8114984, 8119415, 8121228, 8237732, 8267373, 8354257, 8381178, 8527378, 8608154, 8712426, 8719444, 8736337, 9093368, 9110337, 9190487, 9222830, 9262134, 9414989, 9415104, 9435589, 9452398, 9626317, 9647001, 9660366, 9747437, 9771903, 9830419, 9855268, 9861848, 9917279
Have fun! 
Actually, after looking at the numbers I posted (and seeing that, oh, a few of them go past a million), I feel I need to correct myself. ('Cause someone’s eventually gonna do it!)
According to this site, 8 of the million in XP’s FreeCell are unsolvable. The numbers listed are the projected impossible games (out of the first ten million) using Microsoft’s random number generator.
Whew. Now I feel better.
I have been a free cell fanatic for years and my longest winning streak stopped at 99. No cheating, I despise cheating. After that streak ended which was about a year ago, I couldn’t bear to start a new streak. The pressure is too great. Also my mother has had a streak of 144.
I can’t remember the last time I lost a game of Freecell. My tickle is Spider Solitaire with 4 suits. I still win most of those. 
Edit: Spider solitaire - The Game Room - Straight Dope Message Board
I’ve got the SolSuite version of the game (Freecell with various numbers of decks, along with about 400 other games) and I’ve never lost a game yet. I guess the Windows version doesn’t allow unlimited undos? :).
Moving this zombie to the Game Room, which did not exist when it last saw the light of day.
twickster, MPSIMS moderator
Sorry, didn’t spot it was a zombie.
Quoth kniz:
My Minesweeper record is somewhere in that vicinity, but there’s no way I could replicate it now, having gotten way out of practice since I switched to Mac. And I’ve heard of folks who are down around 50 seconds.
Jake, a listed chance of winning for FreeCell doesn’t mean much, since that’s almost entirely dependent on the skill of the player. Since the vast majority of them can be won, and all of the information is available to the player right from the start of the game, a skilled player will win much more than 1 in 3.