A great
solitaire card game that you can play on a
computer. Freecell is
standard on every single computer
everywhere. That might be an overstatement, but I know it comes standard on
Windows, I've seen it on
Macs, and it came standard on the
Linux box I'm on right now, so it's fair to assume that almost everyone who uses a computer has access to Freecell. If you don't know what Freecell is, either play a game right now, or read what I wrote about it at the bottom of this
writeup. Freecell is very
addictive game. I play it all the time at my
job. Someone told me once that all games of freecell are beatable, unlike some other, inferior, forms of solitaire. So never ever give up on a game of Freecell. If you keep trying, eventually you will beat it, or at least I have never run into a game that I can't beat. In theory, therefore, you can win 100% of the freecell games you play. I run around 95%, and I've kept that up for several hundred games now. Any game that I don't beat the first time around, I usually get on the second, or possibly the third. Supposedly, I've heard, there is a secret way to play some games on the Windows version that are not beatable, but I haven't found them. If you do, write something up in this node about it. Freecell is a great game, and if you've never played you should
give it a shot.
How to Play Freecell
Freecell is a fairly simple game. All the cards are dealt out randomly into eight columns. You can stack cards red on black in descending order on these columns. There are 4 "cells"(usually on the right) on top that you can put aces on and stack the suit in ascending order on. You win by having all the cards stacked on those cells. On the left, there are 4 free cells, which you can put any card you want on. However, you must also use those free cells to move stacks of cards, by moving the bottom card on the stack, and then the second to bottom, until you get to the top card, which presumably can move onto another card on a different stack. The upshot of all that long confusing sentence is that you can move a stack with only one more card than the number of open free cells. So when all your cells are open, you can move a stack of 5 cards. When you have a card being held in a free cell, you can only move a stack of 4 cards. The basic strategy is to move cards that are in the way of building stacks on to your free cells temporarily. For a much better description, just play the game. It's probably on the computer you are using right now.