Solitaire (PC) review "Have you actually tried to play solitaire with your own deck of cards? Your answer is most likely no, but I have. And yes, it got messy. A vast number of problems arose when I attempted to do what is best left to computer: I was unsure if there were five rows or seven rows to begin the game, I dealt the cards way to close to the table, it is a pain moving more than five cards in one row to the other, and I had to actually shuffle and deal the cards. After about twenty minutes and two games I qui..."

Have you actually tried to play solitaire with your own deck of cards? Your answer is most likely no, but I have. And yes, it got messy. A vast number of problems arose when I attempted to do what is best left to computer: I was unsure if there were five rows or seven rows to begin the game, I dealt the cards way to close to the table, it is a pain moving more than five cards in one row to the other, and I had to actually shuffle and deal the cards. After about twenty minutes and two games I quit and vowed to never play Solitaire again.

And then I opened the screen to my laptop. Because I lack self control, I clicked on the Solitaire program under the games folder from the start menu and began to play. For those of you who live under a rock, Solitaire is game in which the object is to use all the cards in the deck to build up the four suit stacks in ascending order, beginning with the aces. To set-up the game, you are dealt twenty-eight cards in seven rows. One card in the first row, two cards in the second row, et cetera. While dealing each of these cards, the top card of each row is flipped over so its number is revealed. The bulk of the cards that remain are placed above the first row.

To begin play, you at first skim the top cards over for an Ace. If you are fortunate enough to have one, you place that card above the fourth row. Afterwards, if there is a Two which is the same suit as the Ace you can place it over the latter. You continue on doing this until a King is at the top. The next thing to do is to begin to make stacks of cards in descending order. If you have, for example, an Eight of Spades and a Nine of Hearts you can place the Eight onto the Nine. Once this is done, you can flip the card that is under the eight over. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a Spades onto a Hearts, it can be a Clubs onto a Diamonds. As long as it is red onto black in descending order it is legal. Once you are left with no moves to make, you can flip one or three cards (your choice) over from the bulk of remaining cards that sit in the left hand corner. If continued and you come to no dead ends, you win and… well I won’t spoil the end for you.

Sounds complex, huh? It is actually quite the opposite. After one or two games you’ll get the hang of it. As previously mentioned, you are given the option of being dealt one or three cards. A few other nifty options are different decks of cards. Of those are a fish and an astronaut, though I’m sad to say that there are none that Ted Kennedy would approve of. Your games also get timed and scored, which scores you on how many moves you make. Although limited, the options do make for a better experience.

And a good experience will be had playing Solitaire whether you’re playing the game to kill time at work or using Microsoft 3.0 in its original form. Well, a deck of cards is actually its original form, but we already know about that.

Community review by espnking2002 (August 14, 2007) A bio for this contributor is currently unavailable, but check back soon to see if that changes. If you are the author of this review, you can update your bio from the Settings page.