Gallery Solitaire

The Game

The object of this solitaire game is to build a complete picture gallery of Jacks, Queens, and Kings. It is implemented as a Java applet. You can compare your efforts with the result of a non-strategy. CAP (computer aided playing) available.

The main implementations of this casual game are a online Java applet, a Mac Dashboard Widget (and a very old Mac application)

Layout and Rules

Briefly: Build sequences on the foundation by suit (top row 1-5-8-Jack, middle 3-6-9-Queen, bottom 4-7-10-King) using the cards of the tableau and the still uncorrect cards of the foundation. Deal cards from the stock to the tableau; at the end let the computer do the same starting situation a few times.

top row:
2 - 5 - 8 - Jack

middle row:
3 - 6 - 9 - Queen

bottom row:
4 - 7- 10 - King

Stock: The stock initially consists of two decks (104 cards). Each time 8 cards were played to the 8 tableau piles. At the beginning the first 24 cards were played to the foundation.
Foundation: 24 piles: 3 rows with 8 columns.; Spaces were filled with the base cards "2", "3", "4".
Building rule: by suit, up in sequence (rank difference: 3)
Cards at their correct position have a slightly different appearance (missing number and frame).
Tableau: 8 piles fed by the cards played from the stock. Only completely visible cards are available for play.
Ace Pile: Aces are removed to the aces pile.

Setup and Play

The game is begun by dealing 24 cards, face up, to the foundation and 8 to the tableau. Some of the cards on the foundation may now already be at their final position ("2", "3", "4"), aces go to the ace pile.

You can now

move "2", "3", "4" to empty spaces in the foundation area
move cards of the same suit and of a 3 point higher rank on already correct cards of the foundation
undo your moves (but only back to the latest operation on the stock)
deal another 8 cards from the stock to the tableau.

You can't

place a card onto a incorrect card of the foundation (even if it would be in the correct row)
move cards of the tableau to another column of the tableau
move groups of cards
undo an operation on the stock.

Winning situation

You build a complete gallery of all face cards, you remove all cards from the tableau (score: 0)
Or: you make a better score than the computer (see below); for the comparison use whatever measure you like (better than the minimum or better than the median).

Hints

Do not play all cards which are movable
Look for the position of the twin card (the card with the same suit and rank). Thus you can avoid (final) jam situations.
Decide the optimal sequence of moves.
Try to resolve "jam situations": a card covers in the tableau a card which finally should lay on top of exactly this card in the foundations

Playing time: Gallery is the game for a short break, it takes about 3 minutes.

CAP: "computer aided playing"

Level 0: no CAP
Level 1: a yellow point on the stack indicates when no card is movable.
Level 2: Markers indicate movable cards. You concentrate your efforts in taking good decisions instead of searching around for movable cards. "Jam situations" are marked.
Level 3/4: In a lot of situations there is no reason not to play a movable card: in these cases Gallery shows (level 3) or does respectively (level 4) such evident, unproblematic moves automatically. Some obvious cases:
- the twin card is already in its correct place
- you have two foundation piles to play a card to
- the twin card is on the bottom of a tableau pile
- etc.
If there is no movable card, the stock is marked by a green point:
Click on this (stock) card (or eventually undo a move).

Note: The Dashboard Widget knows only level 4.

Play a game online!

Statistics

Because of the security restrictions of Java applets you can not record statistics (as in the old Mac version). A good player achieves a mean score of about 22, he/she makes a score of 0 (zero) every 7th game and compared to the trivial all-you-can-do strategy he/she wins 70% of the games and looses 20% (10% are drawn). Because in this versions the computer does this simple strategy at least 50 times you will loose more games - if you compare with computer's best result. This non-strategy leads to a mean score of about 31, only 3% of the games have a result of 0.

Widget:

Applet:

red computer's score better than yours (%)

gray drawn

green percentage of scores you better than the computer

Number in the center: % of won games + 0.5 * drawn games

You your score

Computer

min computer's best score

median 50% of the tries are better (or equal) and 50% are worse (or equal)

mean mean score

max computer's worst score

mode most frequent score

scores number of different scores

N number of computer's tries

Thanks

The card faces are still the ones by Mike Casteel.

Feedback

If you have suggestions, comments, bug reports (OS? browser version?), ideas, programming hints, don't hesitate and contact me!

Other projects:

Cartography: MAPresso