Four-suit Master Level – let’s do this!!!

Another working day over and done with, I guess it’s time to play a 4-suit hand at Master level 😉

Avid readers of this blog may recall I discussed the difference between an “expert” level and “grandmaster” level hand – but conveniently omitted the “master” level which is somewhere in between. Recall that Microsoft Spider Solitaire gives the player the option of choosing a difficulty level as well as number of suits. In this case we know (before touching a card) that

• The game is guaranteed winnable
• The difficulty should be “average” because 4-suit hands have four difficulty levels namely: expert, master, grandmaster and random

A cursory analysis of the opening position suggests our prospects are good: we have five guaranteed turnovers (only one in-suit but we can live with that), and we have nine different ranks (only Fives are duplicated). If this were a random deal, I would consider myself a favourite to win this game, but at master-level difficulty I’m not so sure.

This could be a “honey-trap” – Microsoft may want to encourage players to accept whatever starting hand they get, and then unleash a surprise or three on the next 30 cards in the stock 😉 (players can refuse a starting hand without having a loss officially recorded in their stats, but I always play every hand). However I’m not making any accusations of foul play without any concrete evidence. This could be a future project, but for now let us focus on winning the game.

FUN FACT: if the opening hand contains ten different ranks we are guaranteed at least six turn-overs with proper play.