Solitaire

Along the lines of “Look what they thought of next…” my new phone has a game of solitaire in it. It’s the traditional game where seven piles of cards with increasing numbers of cards in them are dealt. It may be the most popular game on the planet -- but this game has a twist. What are the chances that two games come out exactly the same? The number of ways the cards can be dealt is an 8 with 67 zeros after it (technically called 52 factoral). It’s up there with the odds of winning megabucks five times, then getting struck by lightning and hit by a meteor (no, I haven’t calculated those out). On top of that, multiply our unlikely by the number of ways that the same hand can be played and ‘astronomical’ doesn’t even begin to cover it. The game is about personal choices. It unfolds according to dozens of decisions, most of them quite obvious; red jack on a black queen. I often realize, though, that if I had waited a few turns to play a card the game would have turned out entirely differently. Small choices make a big difference. The ‘twist’ in the game on my phone was a button labeled ‘restart same game.’ It was this button that made realize that the same configuration of dealt cards can have a completely different outcome based on the slightest change in the way the cards were played. Missing an obvious play results in a game won, or lost Moving this card instead of that makes all the difference If I had only known what was underneath that card Can any game be won? If I play the same game over and over, knowing more about what comes next each time, could I win them all? The ‘restart same game’ button allows me to find out: “Is it the cards we’re dealt or the way we play them?”