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How may games?

by chilliemander » 2007-04-10 10:58:22 #4888

I'm not a math whiz, and it's been too long since I sat in a math class to figure out the answer myself....so, exactly how many games of solitaire are possible to deal? I mean, after we exhaust them all, I'm not sure what any of us are going to do. (Although, I'm sure the answer is so large, that maybe I won't even be around to play them all.)

by chilliemander » 2007-04-10 12:03:00 #6245

Ok, I guess I can't spell. The subject should have been How Many Games? DOH!

by Adam Lyttle » 2007-04-10 14:43:55 #6246

I researched this before making Solitaire Craving (because I was interested to know the answer as well). Apparently noone has been able to calculate exactly how many different games can be dealt, in fact the odds of winning can't even be calculated.

From wikipedia:

"The proportion of Klondike (solitaire) games that can be won is currently unknown. No mathematical model simple enough to allow direct computation of this probability has yet been found."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klondike_%28solitaire%29

Perhaps Solitaire Craving is the first working model to show what percentage of games are achievable?

by Adam Lyttle » 2007-04-10 14:50:06 #6247

Just looking at the archive: 22 impossible games have been dealt out of the 306 (give or take) that have been generated. Which means 7% of the games are impossible to complete. To put it another way - if you dealt 100 games you can potentially complete 93 of them.

But then you need to factor in how many different variations of the same deck there are (as we all know if you move the wrong card you can destroy all chances of completing the game).

But definitely an interesting question with a surprisingly complex answer! smile

by Adam Lyttle » 2007-04-10 14:52:21 #6248

I think I got side tracked actually.. You asked how many games can be dealt, not how many can be won. That is an easy one to answer, if you have a computer that can calculate the following:

52^52^52^52^52^52^52^52^52^52^52^52^52^52^52^52^52^52^52^52
^52^52^52^52^52^52^52^52^52^52^52^52^52^52^52^52^52^52^52
^52^52^52^52^52^52^52^52^52^52^52^52^52^52^52^52^52^52^52
^52^52^52^52

(52 to the power of 52, 52 times)