I’m pretty good at the 4-suit game, winning nearly 60% of the games - and I’d win more if I could save the game under Vista without exitting - but I’m wondering: are all the games presented winnable?
How the heck do you win 60% of the games with 4 suits? I think my win average is about 1/10 of that.
I must be doing something wrong.
Yeah, even with taking back all the turns to find the optimal cards to overturn I’d be nowhere near that.
It can take over 1500 moves - I don’t think I’ve cracked 2000 yet. One trick is to move only part of a set and not the whole set. Another, more critical, objective is two blank columns.
That’s way way more time than I’d care to spend.
It’s kind of hard to prove that every possible deal of a computer game is winnable. But proving that they’re not is usually much easier – just come up with a deal that’s not winnable.
In this case, imagine one where the last row of cards to be dealt up is all, say, Kings and Jacks. The kings can’t go anywhere because there are no empty spaces. The jacks can’t go anywhere because they don’t play on Kings. Hence, you can do nothing with that deal and you lose.
Whether all the games that your version of the software presents you have been pre-determined to be winnable can vary – there are solitaire programs out there that let you set ‘winnable deals only’ as an option. That’s fairly non-standard, though and it would most likely be a menu option in the software, not a default.
I love Spider, but this is more in line with my experience. 60%? WTF? There are games I’ve gotten pretty far on and then get hung up–those I recognize are likely winnable if I had made different moves. But there are plenty of times I can’t for the life of me see any way to win certain set-ups. At least not given the parameters I play under. Are there variations to allow an easier game?
I find that number fairly surprising, as well. SolSuite lists the chance of winning a straight game of Spider at about 5%.
Hot damn! I stay solidly around 25% for two suits and I play a LOT.
You are a Spider Solitare genius 
Word. I have never won a four-suit game (admittedly, I get so frustrated, I don’t bother trying much) and my highest score in a two suit game is 1194. I can’t even break 1200 and my win rate hovers around 20%.
I suck. 
Help?
I only play 4-suit and I probably win 25% of my games. I don’t restart games if I lose and might win more if I did. I just play to kill time while letting some long-running junk run in the background. I find 60% unlikely but not impossible. I generally play about 500 moves–never look at the points, and don’t really count how many I win, so 25% is a WAG at best.
The theory is true but your example is not: you just need to make sure that you end up with Queens where the Jacks will lie, so you move the stack of Q+J onto a King.
I’m well aware that you can create an unwinnable game - you just repeat your example for each deal. But I’m asking if the Spider Solitaire can do this: will it present an unwinnable game?
It’s actually 58% (pic). Note that this is a recent reinstallation of Vista so I haven’t played many games.
I win more than 80% but it’s because I cheat. I undo to my heart’s content and save before dealing in case I make a mistake - then I can revert to the saved game.
Was anyone else tempted to hit the reset button in the screenshot? 
As I said, generally solitaire games that have ‘present only winnable deals’ as an option if they offer it at all. If you haven’t set ‘present only winnable deals’ in your software, there’s a very low chance that it’s doing that.
In the Vista version, you can undo a deal but not save.
Rotter!
OK, I am astounded by the claims of win percentages here. I win maybe 25% of my two-suited games. I tried a 4 suited game once. Once.
What is the secret? When does it make sense to play a red card onto a black card? I’m sure that is where I am going wrong. Obviously it is always good to uncover a new card, but is it worth screwing up a long string of same-suited cards to do so?
OK, I stand* corrected. Clearly %60 is not that unlikely.
- Actually I sit corrected.