Game on! (17 June 2020)

Continuing from last week

I hope you understand the notation by now; if not please refer to previous posts.

<ch,ic,hc,bf, cb> Ks

<jc> Jc

<ba, bi, gb> 9c

<be,gb > 6h

<ai,ga> Qs

<jg> Ad

<fa, cf> Qc

Now is a good time to take stock and assess the position. Clearly we are doing very well with only 16 cards face-down in the tableau and four rounds left in the stock. We have one “implied” empty column since the Ace of Diamonds can play onto the Two of Hearts on the left. This is worth one turnover in any of the four left-most columns. We also note that:

• There are only four columns containing at least one face-down card. This is good news when playing for empty columns, but there is a new danger: the possibility of one-hole-no-card. It’s not an immediate problem since the cards in columns b-c-d are “clean”, but it’s still something to bear in mind.
• We are not close to completing a full suit. This can be “blamed” on having so many unseen cards in the stock, but it sure beats having so many unseen cards in the tableau! Spades and Clubs do look promising with only three cards missing.

So it seems our strategy should be to keep trying to tidy in-suit builds and expose as many face down cards as possible. I generally find once all cards in the tableau are exposed, the complete suits will take care of themselves (barring a series of major accidents). But if you can’t expose all face-down cards then you have to “earn” your suits. How would you continue?