I’m playing Solitaire (Klondike Deal 3) on my computer and I was wondering how often do people “win” these games.
A quick web search seems to show that somewhere around 80% of the games are winnable, but my rate of winning is much less than that.
Do you guys get close to the 80% win rate? If not, what percent of the time do you win?
You misunderstand that 80% thing.
The paper that is referenced on Wikipedia said that 82-91% are solvable. However, that does not equal winnable.
Why?
Because frequently you have multiple plays you can make at the same time. The order of plays is important, and since cards are hidden, you can’t anticipate what cards are going to show up.
That’s why “thoughtful” Klondike has a high success rate. It’s playing with knowledge of what all the cards are.
I don’t think anyone has calculated what the official odds of “non-thoughtful” Klondike is, but my experience is it sits somewhere around 5%.
And I once dealt myself a blocked game.
By “blocked game”, do you mean a game where you can’t make any moves at all, either on the beginning board or through the deck? If so, it’s really strange you bring that up… it happened to me today while playing Klondike on my ipod, and it dawned on me that a game like that is probably much rarer that a winning game. Not that I have any statistics to back that up; it just seems to me I remember winning many games, but I don’t remember many games where I haven’t been able to make even one move.
Yep. I looked at the tableau and couldn’t make a move. I had something like 6 black cards, one red card, and no aces. I then proceeded to run throught the deck and none of my cards was useable either.
I think the academic paper I mentioned above said blocked games happen less than one percent of the time.
Just to add another data point – I have a solitaire suite of games on my Palm that I have been playing for a few years that tracks my game stats.
For Klondike I have played 946 times and have won 13%. This is with three card deal, and no way to see the undealt cards.
For Canfield (my favorite) I’ve played 3,240 games and won 9%.
Vegas is the worst though. 650 games and I’ve won 3%.
Of course, actual Vegas people would kill for those odds.