Freecell Solitaire & Fun

By Author: Rafal Tyler
Total Articles: 5
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Since the dawn of intelligent humanity ‘gaming’ has been an important source for fun and has been proved to be necessary to evolve the human race. It provides good mental exercise and depending on the game is a relaxing time passing activity. Many jobs and even entire careers have been concentrated on the industry of gaming. Wikipedia defines “Solitaire” as a table-top gaming, having three different meanings; the most general of all means any tabletop game which one can play by oneself. “Patience” is yet another term used by the British used to define solitaire played with a deck of cards. If not played with cards, Solitaire is often played with a set layout of tiles, pegs or stones. Solitaire is in its most simple definition a single player game requiring concentration and skill. Mahjong and Peg solitaires are its other variants.



FreeCell solitaire is a card game played with a standard deck of 52 cards. It is an exceedingly popular card game version of Solitaire; is played worldwide and followed by many long time enthusiasts. It is not possible to solve each and every deal played on other ...
... variants of solitaire, in fact most solitaire games are very rarely solvable. However FreeCell is different from other solitaire card game versions; in this variant nearly all deals are able to be solved. In FreeCell, cards on the tableau are built by alternate colours rather than built by suit. In the June 1968 edition of “Scientific American”, Martin Gardner in his article “Mathematical Games” documented another version or a rather similar version of FreeCell solitaire which dated back as early as the 1920’s, making FreeCell solitaire one of the oldest card games that is still being played. The FreeCell game can be mathematically defined in which NP-Completeness plays a strategic part, meaning that it is unlikely that any algorithm more effective than a brute-force search algorithm exists that can find solutions for arbitrary generalized FreeCell configurations.



There are 52 cards deck used which leads to 52! Factorials which leads to as many as 8*10^67 unique deals in FreeCell solitaire. There are even some computer programs designed by FreeCell solitaire enthusiasts; Don Woods wrote one such program in 1997, ‘Patsolve’ by Tom Holroyd is another computer program that uses atomic moves to automatically solve FreeCell. This game of solitaire is played often played regularly by enthusiasts, and even though such games like Sudoku develop a craze and then become less popular, the enthusiasm for FreeCell remains constant.



It is one of the oldest games that is played with cards and has gained in popularity over the years with versions being given away free with computers and available on the internet. As this classic solitaire game continues to spread around with it being taught and played to new generations we can only expect that this game will retain its timeless appeal.



Spider Solitaire and Freecell Solitaire - the immensely popular and challenging free card game. Play it online!