Fancy a game of Klondike Solitaire?

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It's a solitaire card game called Klondike. When it comes to solitaire card games in the United States and Canada, the term "Solitaire" is used without additional qualifiers and refers to Klondike. "Patience" is also a common term in the United Kingdom. The game is also known as American Patience, Fascination, Triangle, and Demon Patience in other regions.

Richard Canfield's "Demon" solitaire card game is known as "Canfield" in England, while Klondike is referred to as "Canfield" in the United States of America (although Canfield himself called his game Klondike).

Klondike may have been named after a Canadian region where a gold rush occurred, according to Tung (2015), who claims the game became popular in the late nineteenth century. Its current ubiquity can be attributed in large part to its inclusion in Microsoft Windows operating systems in the 1990s. It's the most widely played form of solitaire.

Rules

Standard 52-card decks without Jokers are used in Klondike. A tableau of seven fanned-out piles of cards is then laid out from left to right after the shuffling has completed. Each pile from left to right has one more card than the one before it. The first and left-most pile contains a single upturned card, the second pile contains two cards (one downturned, one upturned), the third pile contains three cards (two downturned, one upturned), and so on, until the seventh pile, which contains seven cards, which is the last pile (six downturned, one upturned). The top card in each pile is turned face up. The rest of the cards are placed face down in the upper left corner of the layout to form the stock.

It is possible to build down the tableau piles (the dark rectangles in the upper left of the figure) by alternating colors between the four foundations (the light rectangles on the upper right). The highest card of each face-up card in a partial or complete pile can be moved to another tableau pile. A King can be placed in any empty pile, or a pile of cards with a King can be placed. At the end of the game, if the player manages to build up four stacks of cards from Ace to King, all of the same suit, on one of the four foundations, he or she would have won. To deal the rest of the deck from the stock to the waste, there are a number of options:

• Three cards at a time, with no limit on the number of times through the deck you can discard them.
• Using three passes through the deck to discard three cards at a time.
• The deck is flipped over three times, each time discarding a card.
• Tossing one card at a time into the discard pile, and if possible, playing it.
• One card at a time, with no limit on how many times through the deck you can do this.

As soon as there are no more moves, the game is considered over. It is impossible to win at this point.

Probability of winning

If you're playing Klondike with the best possible strategy, you have a 1 in 30 chance of winning, according to Hoyle's Rules Of Games. These odds have been referred to by Persi Diaconis as "one of applied probability's embarrasses" by mathematician Persi Diaconis "Thoughtful Klondike," a modified version of the game in which all 52 cards are known, is the best source of information on Klondike's winnability."
Thinkful Klondike (draw three rules) has a chance of winning approximately 82%, with a confidence interval of 81.956–0.096%, according to the results of the calculations It's not the same as just playing with all cards face up, since that would allow a pile to move in an impossible order if the top card was in sequence with the card underneath it that was turned face up. To play Thoughtful Klondike with physical cards, peeking at the face-down cards is required; however, with electronic programs, unlimited undos allow players to go back to the beginning if a decision proves unfavorable.

Scoring

Ten points are awarded for moving cards directly from the Waste pile to a Foundation. It's possible to get an additional 5 points for a total of 15 if the card is first moved to a Tableau and then to a Foundation. No cards should be moved directly from Waste to Foundation in order to receive a maximum score.
If the Timed game option is selected, time can also play a role in Windows Solitaire. Two points are deducted for every 10 seconds of play. If the game takes at least 30 seconds to complete, the bonus points are calculated using the formula (20,000 x (seconds to finish)) x 35). Bonus points are not awarded if the game is completed in less than 30 seconds.

Variations

Single 52-card deck

Listed here are some variants of Klondike:

• Every item in Agnes' inventory is available because the stock is distributed in seven-batch lots on reserve piles. For this reason, the twenty-ninth card dealt to the foundations will determine the foundations' base values.
• Seven piles of three cards each, two face down and one up, hold twenty-one cards in Easthaven (also known as Aces Up). To continue the game, seven new cards are dealt face-up to the tableau in piles of three, one on top of each existing pile, and when a play comes to an end, the remaining cards are dealt face-up to the tableau, one on top of each existing pile. Easthaven might have two or three decks of cards. Double Easthaven or Gypsy are the names given to the two-deck version.
• As opposed to Klondike, in Nine Across there are nine columns of cards dealt instead of seven. While the foundation cards can be chosen by the player, if one or more eights are exposed, the player may choose to build on eights, and the piles are built 8-9-10-JQK-2-3-44-56-7. Using eights as a starting point, sevens fill in the gaps, and so forth. As many times as necessary, the stock is dealt through one by one.
• When playing Thumb and Pouch, cards of any suit can be placed on top of each other (e.g. spades cannot be placed on top of other spades), and any number of cards or sequences can be used to fill spaces.
• Building by color (red on red, black on black), cards of the same suit can be moved together as a unit, and any card or sequence can be used to fill a space.
• Westcliff uses ten three-card piles of three cards each: two face down and one face up, with 30 cards total being dealt. Any card or sequence can be used to fill a space in this game.
• The only difference between Klondike and Kuipers is the number of columns, which in Kuipers is eight instead of seven. One card at a time, with no limit on how many times through the deck you can do this. This reduces the chance of winning to approximately 5%, which honors the game's name: patience...

Tarot deck

A 78-card deck in the Tarot style can be used to play the game (such as a Tarot Nouveau). There are two methods to this problem. Stacks for each tableau are numbered from 1 to 9.
• In the Klondike Nouveau Run, the first card in the trumps foundation can be the Fool, or it can be removed before playing. Between the Jack and the Queen, the Knight (Chevalier) appears.
• Use six foundations; the usual four, and then use the red cavaliers (cavaliers) as the royals for trumps 1-10, and the black cavaliers as the royals for trumps 11-21 in Klondike Tarot Evens.

Gambling Variant

With the rule of dealing one card at a time and going through the stock only once, some casinos have turned Klondike into a gambling game. Suppose a player pays $50 to play, and the house pays $5 for each card played to the foundations, for a total of $75. Las Vegas Solitaire is a common name for this variation of Klondike.

Joker Solitaire

In Joker Solitaire, Joli Quentin Kansil has added two jokers that act as limited wild cards to the Klondike game. Players are required to make a lot of calculated decisions as a result of this.

Double Solitaire

Double Solitaire is the name given to the two-player version of Klondike. There is no way for players to play to each other's tableaus, but they do have to share their decks. Once a talon card is used up, the players switch places. All 52 cards must be played in order for a player to be declared the winner. Solitaire can be played with more than two players and each player can play at their own pace, resulting in spirited debates when one player strategically refuses to place a card on one of the foundations to prevent another player from placing another card on top of that card.

Computerized versions

Klondike's digital versions have gained in popularity and offer a number of benefits not available when using a physical deck. The following are notable examples of computer-generated versions:

• In Microsoft's Windows operating system, "Solitaire" has been a staple since Windows 3.0, when it was first released in 1990. Many people's first introduction to using a computer mouse came from playing Solitaire, which Microsoft included as a fun diversion and educational tool. According to Microsoft officials, Spider Solitaire had been the most popular application on Windows for "years" in 1994.
• Published by the Atari Program Exchange in 1981, Mark Reid's implementation of Klondike was titled Solitaire and was available for the Atari 8-bit family.
• First released in 1984, Michael A. Casteel's shareware version of Klondike for the Macintosh continues to be updated.
• For the Nintendo Switch, the compilation Clubhouse Games: 51 Worldwide Classics now includes Klondike.