Game Over – Spider Solitaire wins!!!!

Okay, apparently Spider Solitaire level 18 on iPhone is too hard, even for yours truly.

Trevor seemed to be gaining the ascendency with four consecutive wins on 7-10 (unfortunately not a horizontal Connect Four), but then it all fell apart on 11,12,13,14.

The game on 12 was brutal. Ninja Monkey’s famous 1-suit random move algorithm estimates a win rate of only 0.04. Game 13 was even worse, with Trevor unable to determine the identity of seven (7) face-down cards even with unlimited undo. Assuming random guessing for these seven cards, Ninja Monkey reported a win rate of 0.06.

Game 14 shows an example where Ninja Monkey badly misjudges the win rate (0.70). Trevor never looked like getting a hole at any stage of the game with a critical shortage of Jacks until the final deal. I will let the reader examine the game shoe and judge for himself.

So the jury is still out. Is the iPhone spider solitaire software rigged? My gut suggests I need a better algorithm that can get a decent win rate at 4-suit solitaire. Perhaps this is an exercise for the reader, if you excuse the terrible cliché!