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Saving your gamesRik Pierce 12-27-04  3:54 pm
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Nadeshda
Unregistered guest
Posted on Tuesday, April 22, 2003 - 9:40 am:   

Concerning the post about Russian Solitaire I began to wonder, too. Some people seem to have such a good rate - it seems impossible to me to achieve. How can this be? Is it easy to cheat on "Pretty Good Solitaire" and how do you do it? Or are you just much luckier than me?
Thomas Warfield (Support)
Moderator
Username: Support

Post Number: 264
Registered: 12-2002
Posted on Tuesday, April 22, 2003 - 4:36 pm:   

There have been over the years some methods used to cheat the statistics, some of them quite elaborate (and amazingly time consuming given that you get nothing for cheating), but as I have become aware of them I have blocked these methods in newer versions.
Miriam Frankort (Miriam)
New Solitaire Player
Username: Miriam

Post Number: 8
Registered: 1-2003
Posted on Tuesday, April 22, 2003 - 11:50 pm:   

I thought of a very simple way to cheat. I play PGS on two different machines. What if on one machine I only repeat the games I have won on the other one?
But I have two observations to make: first of all: if someone feels this terrible need to cheat with something like this, he or she has a mental problem. Let them cheat. It doesn't bother me, because I play to improve myself.
My second point is: when I started playing spider, I thought that people scoring 100% must be cheating. But because of that, I tried harder and I improved my score from 75% to 87%. I now see that 100% must be possible.
Anonymous
Posted on Wednesday, April 23, 2003 - 10:52 am:   

I like your attitude and observations. If in fact G. Campbell is cheating at a particular game ( Russian Solitare) he or she is only cheating themselves. Using your stats to improve your abilities is admirable.
Thomas Warfield (Support)
Moderator
Username: Support

Post Number: 267
Registered: 12-2002
Posted on Wednesday, April 23, 2003 - 3:30 pm:   

Hi Miriam,
Yes, that's an example of the kind of thing some people will apparently go to in order to cheat. Such things would seem to me to be awfully tedious, though.

100% is possible in Spider as long as you don't run into an impossible position. A lot of people do it, mainly through heavy use of the undo button. It takes a while to win Spider, so the number of games played is lot lower than FreeCell.

Like FreeCell, there are impossible positions in Spider. The impossible positions in Spider are more common than FreeCell (I haven't done an analysis on how common they might be, but I know such positions exist because they can be constructed).
Frank D'Urso (Frank_durso)
New Solitaire Player
Username: Frank_durso

Post Number: 58
Registered: 2-2003
Posted on Thursday, May 01, 2003 - 5:13 pm:   

Maybe we can have ANOTHER section of this forum to query the results that look funny, obviously if there is an unwinnable game then it won't be winnable by 100% winners.....or will it??? So I guess this would be the forum section to post this query after all : )

Miriam Frankort (Miriam)
New Solitaire Player
Username: Miriam

Post Number: 10
Registered: 1-2003
Posted on Friday, May 02, 2003 - 1:18 am:   

Thomas,
You stated that you know there are impossible positions because they can be constructed.
Can you do the constructing digital or just the old-fashioned way with real cards? Because it would be fun to create spider puzzles for others to solve.
Thomas Warfield (Support)
Moderator
Username: Support

Post Number: 291
Registered: 12-2002
Posted on Friday, May 02, 2003 - 3:38 pm:   

>You stated that you know there are impossible positions because they can be constructed.

An impossible Spider game can be constructed by creating a hand where the last row of cards dealt to the tableau results in no possible moves among those cards (These would be the last 10 cards in the deck). This makes the game unwinnable.

Before the last deal, you have to have at least one card in all of the tableau piles (because Spider doesn't let you deal with an empty tableau pile). Then when you do the last deal, if there are no possible moves among those 10 cards, there is nothing you can do. There are no more cards to deal out and you can't play. You lose.

Note that this does not necessary mean that any game where you *can* make a move from among the final 10 cards dealt is winnable, but it is clear that if you cannot it is unwinnable. There may be other ways to have an unwinnable game, but this proves that not every game of Spider is winnable.

I haven't tried to calculate what the percentage probability of this occuring is, but with some thought and some knowledge of permutations and combinations it could be calculated.

Charles Ion
Unregistered guest
Posted on Saturday, June 21, 2003 - 1:44 pm:   

I've been playing Simon Jester with great results with a 97+ win ratio. Could have been better but ran out of patents or clicked on a new game instead of re-do. I have played 2 games that didn't even allow but two moves. I sat for some time trying to win but in my opion there is no way to win those games.
Several others have tried this game but with not much luck. I have found three things I did wrong in the beginning until I change my approach on my moves.
Have you ever thought of having interchange with players either through your web page or a way that players can e-mail each other on tips to improve their scores.
This is a great game and is very challenging and I would like others to do well. Sometimes it takes me several hours to win and in some cases up to a week. May be you could call it Helpful hints from other players or somthing like that.
Anonymous
Posted on Monday, December 27, 2004 - 1:36 am:   

The suggested success rate for Eight On is 25%. Getting to 35% and thinking this must be a record, I logged on to top scores only to find someone with 89%. This is remarklable given that many ganes can't even be started, and others become impossible after a few moves.
Thomas Warfield (Support)
Moderator
Username: Support

Post Number: 833
Registered: 12-2002
Posted on Monday, December 27, 2004 - 10:26 pm:   

The success rates on the help file are only estimates based on a small number of games. For a better idea of how winnable a game is, see the posted game statistics.

If you can determine that a game looks unwinnable without making any moves, you can just do a new game and it won't count in the statistics. This can greatly improve your winning percentage.

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