The Author – Bart Busschots
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May
6
The Great Solitaire Experiment
Filed Under Science & Astronomy on May 6, 2007 at 2:41 pm
To settle a little argument in the family I’ve been keeping a record of the results of all the games of Solitaire I’ve played since Easter. Since Nature weren’t interested in my results I present them here on my humble blog 🙂 To cut a long story short, Dad’s hypothesis was that one only wins about one in every twenty games of Solitaire, I disagreed giving a non-scientific estimate that I win about one in five games. He asked me to prove it, so I started keeping records! Today my dataset hit 150 games which I think is enough to average over and get meaningful results. To further support my work my brother also contributed data on a further 100 games owing to extreme boredom while forced to take time off work because of a football injury.
[tags]Solitaire[/tags]
Before presenting an analysis of my results I present my raw data. In the data below a W represents a win and an L a loss:
w w L L L L L L L L W W L L L L L L L L L W L L W L L L L L L L L W L L L W L L L L L L L L W L L L L L W W L L L W L L W L L L L L L L L L L L L L L L L L L W L W L W LL W L L L L L L W L L L L W W L L L L W L L L L L W L W W W W L L L L L L L L L L L L L L W L L L L L L W L L W W W L L L L L L L L L L L W
Analysis of the data reveals a total of 32 wins out of the total of 150 games, or 21.3%. One should also note that my longest loosing streak was 18 games and my longest winning streak was four games.
I don’t have my brother’s raw data to present but his figure of exactly 20 wins out of 100, or 20%, is in good agreement with my own result. This implies one of two things. Either we are both approximately as good as each other at playing Solitaire (with me being slightly more skilled), or there is actually no skill involved in the game and it’s all luck. More research is clearly needed to solve this burning scientific question. I call on others to repeat my experiment and send me their data.
I won one game out of one, so I’m retiring, keeping my 100% record
Bart – to make this a truly scientific experiment, one must be specific about the regional rules under which you’re playing. For example, do you flip one card at a time, or as my father taught me from his errant days in Vegas in the 1950s, flip 3 cards at a time and go through the deck one at a time?
Allison
NosillaCast at http://podfeet.com
A technology geek podcast with an EVER so slight Macintosh bias!
correction to my last post – when flipping three cards, you go through the deck THREE times. my apologies for the double post.
I was playing with the so-called Klondike rules.
Three cards at a time but you can go through the deck as often as you like.
Higher win percentages are possible:
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=3897685124017&set=a.2776133565929.2145585.1335803656&type=1&theater
My current longest winning streak is 25.
The trick is to not give up until you’ve proven to yourself that a game is unwinnable.
I think on average, about 80% of these games are winnable, if you don’t give up.
I have posted a Winning streak of 41 games…my current record is 492 games played with 492 games won…a win percentage of about 83%…it is highly possible to even post a 100 game winning streak…
I mean 402 games won…LOL