[HN Gopher] Solitaire simulator for finding the best strategy: C...
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Solitaire simulator for finding the best strategy: Current record
is 8.590%
Author : PaulHoule
Score : 36 points
Date : 2026-04-17 01:38 UTC (21 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| advisedwang wrote:
| Per [1] (found via wikipedia) 35% is possible!
|
| [1]
| https://web.archive.org/web/20210924183919/https://www.aaai....
| reenorap wrote:
| Isn't 8.5% low?
|
| My mom didn't use the computer much except she did play solitaire
| on her Windows laptop all the time. She had over a 2000 game win
| streak until she got dementia and stopped using the computer
| altogether.
| embedding-shape wrote:
| Similarly, my half-sister's mother was almost allergic to
| anything technology, except for to play Solitaire, which she
| did every single day. I think many of the games offer
| configurable "difficulty" though, there are modes where it's
| guaranteed to be solvable for example. And most of them surely
| are made slightly easier by default.
|
| With a randomly shuffled real deck, wouldn't surprise me that
| it would be ~10%,.
| fishtoaster wrote:
| Winning 2000 games in a row sounds statistically unlikely
| unless the Windows version of solitaire does something behind
| the scenes to make the game more winnable.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klondike_(solitaire)#Probabili...
| InitialLastName wrote:
| I suspect that the later (Win 7+) versions of Windows
| solitaire (and minesweeper, for that matter) did, in fact,
| cull the unwinnable games.
| jasperry wrote:
| I don't know of any algorithm to cull non-winnable Klondike
| games. Playing deal-1 instead of deal-3, and with unlimited
| flipping of the stock, the win chance is probably close to
| 50%, but that still makes 2000 in a row statistically
| impossible.
|
| My guess is that the poster's mom was actually playing
| FreeCell, in which nearly every game is winnable and people
| do get streaks like that.
| npinsker wrote:
| It's quite doable, if you don't mind culling some
| winnable games too. The object isn't to have a perfect
| classifier.
| chocochunks wrote:
| You don't need an algorithm. You can just record seeds
| that are solvable. The current version of Klondike in MS
| Solitaire is winnable unless you play "Random"
| difficulty.
| dezgeg wrote:
| Could there be mixup with FreeCell?
| bluedino wrote:
| The current version, you can play on 'Easy', I think my
| kindergartner wins all his games on that setting.
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| It wouldn't be that difficult to make computer solitaire
| winnable 100% of the time actually. It would mean "cheating"
| by moving cards around behind the scenes though
|
| There's an assumption with computer card games that the
| computer shuffles the deck once just like a real card game
| but that doesn't _have_ to be true on the computer if you don
| 't want it to be
|
| Now, any reasonable player would notice if you reshuffle the
| deck in solitaire, but you could swap around the face down
| cards without any problem. You could have just one stack of
| face down cards in memory and always pop from the top when a
| card is flipped
|
| Edit: Maybe this wouldn't be winnable 100%, but you could
| certainly nudge every hand towards being winnable
| estimator7292 wrote:
| The Microsoft Solitaire Pack or whatever the current branding
| is does, indeed do something behind the scenes to ensure the
| game is winnable.
|
| I suspect they have either a massive database of proven-
| winnable shuffles, or before the game presents a new deck to
| you, it solves it in the background to prove it's winnable.
|
| Personally I dislike this feature. Yeah it sucks to get an
| unwinnable shuffle, but that's just how card games work.
| Ensuring every game is winnable just seems like addiction
| engineering when it's next to the Microsoft logo.
|
| Part of the fun is the uncertainty that a game is possible to
| win. If you know up front that a deck is guaranteed solvable,
| it really colors how you play the game.
| moron4hire wrote:
| Part of the mechanism of psychological addiction is
| unreliable, intermittent rewards. People feel like they are
| in control but can't figure out the optimal win strategy.
| One effective means of treating gambling addiction is to
| just teach people how to get good at gambling. It removes
| the mystery of the system and puts the subject back in
| control. So, making every hand winnable may actually help
| to make the game _less_ addictive.
| InitialLastName wrote:
| Draw 1 is much more winnable than draw 3. With perfect
| knowledge (or an infinite undo stack), evidently ~80% of
| Klondike games are winnable. With imperfect knowledge but good
| strategy, humans win about 11% of draw 3 games. So given they
| have implemented a more rudimentary strategy (first come, first
| serve), 8.5% doesn't seem that low.
| dacracot wrote:
| Yes, it is low, but that is the challenge to fork the repo and
| up the winning percentage.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| Low for a human, yes. But for a computer simulation, it's a
| record high.
| Hackbraten wrote:
| What is 8.590% of what?
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(page generated 2026-04-17 23:01 UTC)