Solitaire is a card game that generally involves a single player. The cards are dealt from a deck that has been well shuffled. They are placed on the playing surface in an arrangement that follows predefined rules and limitations. The player can then play solitaire by organizing the deck through starting moves to replace cards by suit and rank.
The game can be modified to become a multiplayer game. The player decides the scoring option to play with. It could be the standard or Las Vegas scoring method. The latter is a timed system that has been implemented to establish time restrictions and to keep a count of the number of movements made. This makes scoring in the game relatively difficult.
The game has skill levels, with the higher levels being more complex than the lower levels. These skill levels often present the various difficulties in rearranging the deck to finish the game. There are also game options for the number of decks to play. You can have between one and four decks.
The card game has different variations, depending on the layout of the board, the number of cards or decks and the movements allowed. Variations include FreeCell, Spider Solitaire, and Klondike Solitaire. A gamer can access any of these variations as computer games, requiring only the basic Microsoft Windows operating system to run. The games use flash technology, thus eliminating manual installation.
The game is also available online. A player gets details of the game and its rules, and can also play solitaire for free. Free downloads are available. For a beginner to be able to play and be successful at solitaire, they must be familiar with the vocabulary of the game. This vocabulary refers to the terms that are common to the different variations. They include the term cell, which is a place in the board layout where only one card is allowed to be placed. There is also the base, which refers to a target suit that is arranged from Ace to King, moving up. When the layout is established, there is a stack of unused cards left. The term for these cards is stock. This stock becomes a waste pile, when only the first three cards are allowed to be used.
The game of Solitaire has evolved so much today that up to 250 variations of the game can be found. This diversity ensures that players have a lot of fun, without the possibility of getting bored when they play. Solitaire has been a popular game for decades.
