It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these, but with my work year done for 2020 I should have a lot more spare time on my hands for the next few weeks 😊
In this “experiment” I will try a game of Four-Suit Spider sans rot13(haqb) at “random” difficulty. Random means the cards are perfectly shuffled (so for the mathematical cognoscenti among you there are 104! possible hands ignoring equivalence of cards with same rank and suit and each hand occurs with equal probability), and there are no consideration for hands being “rigged”.
To spice things up let us say I need to complete all eight suits AND obtain a score of 1000 or better. In this version of Spider Solitaire, each move costs a point and each complete suit is worth +100. This adds some complexity to the game since I can’t make too many “reversible moves” without thinking.
Before I start the game, I will encourage some audience participation by asking a simple question:
Is this hand better or worse than “average”? In other words, if you had a choice of accepting this hand or choosing a new one what would you do? (assume that you can only take one mulligan). Please let me know in the comments below 😊
Edifying Thoughts of a Spider Solitaire Addict 
Interesting. I would take the do-over on that hand. Four guaranteed moves to start isn’t bad, but you have 3 kings and 14 cards under them. That means (among other things) that your hunt for spaces is limited to 7 piles, and you won’t see those 14 cards for a long time.
New game is interesting too. Personally the one and only thing I care about is whether I win or not, and pay no attention to score or number of moves. But surely it is interesting to attend to those things too.
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Thanks for your comment. I am interested to see what others think.
If other folk want to scrap the scoring target of 1000+ and only focus on winning then I am happy to comply
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OK, catching up with youse guys and decided this is a good place to jump in.
I would definitely dump this game and venture into the unknown. Even though Dia de Tres Reys Magos was only a few days past, the same three kings here are unwelcome as they would seem to make a victory very unlikely.
As far as how the games are played, I should think that time will prove me equally inept in all versions. Having said that, the strict avoidance of the zeekee is what brought me here. So I won’t vote but would be happy if most wanted to stay with the original premise.
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I didn’t know Three Kings Day was a thing, thanks for enriching my cultural knowledge 🙂
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