| Klondike | |
| Subtitle: | A patience game |
| Image Link: | GNOME Aisleriot Solitaire (cropped).png |
| Image Caption: | Game setup |
| Alt Names: | Canfield, Solitaire, Patience, Seven up, Sevens |
| Namedvariants: | Agnes (Bernauer), Batsford, Easthaven, King Albert, Thumb and Pouch, Somerset or Usk, American Westcliff |
| Deck: | Single 52-card |
| Type: | Simple packer |
| Family: | Klondike |
| Odds: | 18% to 43% |
| Playing Time: | 10 min[1] |
Klondike is a card game for one player and the best known and most popular version of the patience or solitaire family,[2] as well as one of the most challenging in widespread play.[3] It has spawned numerous variants including Batsford, Easthaven, King Albert, Thumb and Pouch, Somerset or Usk and Whitehead, as well as the American variants of the games, Agnes and Westcliff. The distinguishing feature of all variants is a triangular layout of the tableau, building in ascending sequence and packing in descending order.[4]
In the U.S. and Canada, it is so well known that the term "Solitaire", in the absence of qualifiers, typically refers to Klondike. Equally in the UK, it is often just known as "Patience". Elsewhere the game is known as American Patience.[5]
Historically, Klondike was also called Canfield in America, perhaps because it was a casino game at the Canfield Casino in Saratoga Springs, New York; this is the name by which it became known in England. Today, however, Canfield is more usually the American name for the patience game called "Demon" in England, which is a different game altogether. Likewise the rumour prevails that this other game was devised by Richard Canfield even though Canfield himself called his game "Klondike".[6]
The origins of the name Klondike are unknown; a handful of authors have speculated the name derives from the late 19th-century Klondike Gold Rush, but no material evidence substantiates such a claim.[7] [8] The earliest rules for the game known as Klondike today appear in the 1907 edition of Hoyle's Games under the name "Seven-Card Klondike". Hoyles calls it a simpler version of "Klondike", also described in the same book, but which turns out to be a gambling version of the game nowadays known as Canfield in the US and Demon elsewhere in the world.[9]
In the 1913 edition of the so-called Official Rules of Card Games, Seven-Card Klondike has become Klondike, with the modification that the pack is run through one card at a time instead of three, and the original Klondike is now being called Canfield.[10]
Klondike's inclusion in Microsoft Windows in the 1990s contributed significantly to its current popularity. It is considered the most popular version of solitaire.[11]
Klondike is played with a standard 52-card deck, without Jokers.
After shuffling, a tableau of seven fanned piles of cards is laid from left to right. From left to right, each pile contains one more card than the last. The first and left-most pile contains a single upturned card, the second pile contains two cards, and so forth. The topmost card of each pile is turned face up.
The remaining cards form the stock and are placed facedown at the upper left of the layout.
The four foundations (light rectangles in the upper right of the figure) are built up by suit from Ace (low in this game) to King, and the tableau piles can be built down by alternate colors. Every face-up card in a partial pile, or a complete pile, can be moved, as a unit, to another tableau pile on the basis of its highest card. Any empty piles can be filled with a King, or a pile of cards with a King. The aim of the game is to build up four stacks of cards starting with Ace and ending with King, all of the same suit, on one of the four foundations, at which time the player would have won.
There are different ways of dealing the remainder of the deck from the stock to the waste, including the following:
If the player can no longer make any meaningful moves, the game is considered lost. At this point, winning is impossible.
The probability of being able to win a game of Klondike with best-possible play is not known, and the inability of theoreticians to precisely calculate these odds has been referred to by mathematician Persi Diaconis as "one of the embarrassments of applied probability".[12]
An upper bound on the probability of winning can be found by considering a modified version of the game called "Thoughtful Solitaire" or "Thoughtful Klondike", in which location of all 52 cards is known.[13] The probability of winning Thoughtful Klondike (with draw three rules) has been estimated at 81.942% ± 0.081%.[14] [15] However the probability of winning regular Klondike is smaller, because sometimes there is no way of knowing the correct move without being able to see the downturned cards.
For the most common variant (turn three cards, unlimited passes), a number of studies have been made. A Klondike-playing AI using Monte Carlo tree search was able to solve up to 35% of randomly generated games.[16] Another algorithm has a winning rate of 52% in “turn one” mode, and 18% in “turn three”.[17] These results place a lower bound on the winnability percentage. One experiment found a skilled human player could win 189 out of 442 games (43%).[18]
Hoyle's Rules of Games suggests the chances of winning as being 1 in 30 games, when there is only one pass through the deck.[19]
Below are some single-pack variants of Klondike:
In some casinos, Klondike is turned into a gambling game, by playing with the rule of dealing cards one at a time and going through the stock once. For example, a player would pay $50 to play, and the house would pay $5 for each card played to the foundations.[21] This form of Klondike is sometimes called Las Vegas Solitaire.
Joker Solitaire is a variant of Klondike created by Joli Quentin Kansil which adds two jokers that serve as limited wild cards.[22]
Klondike has been turned into a two-player game under the name Double Solitaire.[23] Players have their own packs and may not play to each other's tableaus but share their foundations. Players take turns until they are unable to play a card from their talons. The first player to play all 52 cards is the winner. Informally, "Double" Solitaire can be played as a party game with more than 2 players.
Digital versions of Klondike have helped popularize the game and offer advantages over playing with a physical deck. Notable examples of computerized versions include:
Scoring in the Microsoft Windows Solitaire version of Klondike is as follows:[28]
| Move | Points | |
|---|---|---|
| Waste to Tableau | 5 | |
| Waste to Foundation | 10 | |
| Tableau to Foundation | 10 | |
| Turn over Tableau card | 5 | |
| Foundation to Tableau | −15 | |
| Recycle waste when playing by ones | −100 (minimum score is 0) |
Moving cards directly from the Waste stack to a Foundation scores 10 points. However, if the card is first moved to a Tableau, and then to a Foundation, an extra 5 points are scored making a total of 15. Thus, to score the most points, no cards should be moved directly from the Waste to Foundation.
Time also plays a role, if the 'Timed game' option is selected. In this case, 2 points are deducted every 10 seconds. Bonus points are scored using the formula 700,000 ÷ (seconds to finish), if the game takes at least 30 seconds. If the game takes under 30 seconds, no bonus points are awarded.