Game on (25 April 2021, Alternative version)

Once upon a time, there lived a dude named Abraham Maslow. He kept to himself and had few friends. He brushed his teeth three times a day and only drank orange juice and water. His grades weren’t brilliant – then again he wasn’t terrible either. But like most folk at University, he found the lectures were boring. He was okay with Statistics, but would frequently ask himself why he signed up for Commerce and Law subjects. And the less said about Psychology the better. He would much rather spend time playing good ol’ Spider Solitaire.

During his early years he fantasised about obtaining long suited runs of cards and clearing entire suits before the third round of the stock was even dealt. But over time Maslow realised such wild dreams were only for mediocre players who never progressed beyond the Two-Suited version of the game.

There were no really good books on how to achieve awesomeness at Spider Solitaire so Maslow had to work everything out by himself. After much self-study he developed a “Hierarchy of Wants” for the aspiring Spider Solitaire player. At long last, Maslow found he could beat Four-Suit Spider Solitaire about 40% of the time without rot13(haqb).

Maslow’s theory suggested players often made two types of errors. Type I errors involved a player only focussing on stuff at the bottom of the pyramid. This often resulted in a player having no idea how to convert an empty column plus a handful of in-suit builds into victory. Maybe the game state rot13(fhpxrq) so badly in other respects so as to render the initial gains worthless. A Type II error occurred when a player laid too much emphasis on grand plans and triumphant C-major chords whenever a complete suit was removed (at least in the Microsoft Windows version). In other words, a winning player should be building on a solid foundation (hence the pyramid) before he starts thinking about the grand plans and triumphant C-major chords.

Finally, Maslow realised that once the player obtained a decent win rate at the Four-Suit level sans rot13(haqb) he or she could attain further self-fulfillment with the attainment of cheevos, as described in a previous post.

Maslow gave the following example of Hierarchy-of-Wants in action. Maslow noted that the game-state allowed only one guaranteed turnover, and there is a desperate want for empty columns. There are few in-suit builds and only one run of three suited cards (in column 3). Therefore, the player should ignore the fact that the entire Heart Suit is visible except for the Four.

After the usual cycle of constant revisions and rejections, Maslow was finally able to publish what was to become his famous paper “The Psychology of Achieving Awesomeness at Spider Solitaire”. And everybody lived happily ever after.