Summary of round 3 can be found here
Initial Position:
8c4d/7h6h5h4h3h2hAh7h/xxxx8hKc8h3s/0dAs/6s5s4sQs/xxx6dKsJc0c9c8c7c/xxxx3h2cAcJs0s9h8s4h/xxxKhQhJh0s9s8s6s5h4c3s2dAsAh/xxxKsQhJd0c9c8d7d6c5c4c3c2c2s/5s4s7c
Checksum: (2 + 8 + 8 + 2 + 4 + 10 + 12 + 16 + 16 + 3) + 1*10 + 1*13 = 104
Monkey Recommends: cg,fe,bc,bc,ig,ie,dg,he, deal
Actual play (date = 5/Feb, score = 459): ???
Spider GM comments: Bart has kindly requested I shorten the Monkey’s sequences if he repeats the same position with redundant moves. I have done this manually for the time being, but hopefully I can fix up my GitHub code soon …
IM Bart/IM Bug, please confirm you are happy with this final position.
Edifying Thoughts of a Spider Solitaire Addict 
488
This is not good. Not good at all. As far as I can tell, we have a classic “can’t get started” problem. My attempt last time to head off this problem was not enough, but it looks to me like it was in the direction of solving our key problem.
We cannot get a space nor can we uncover a card. IM Bug’s plan would not have allowed us to uncover a card either.
Maybe I don’t need to go through my detailed steps proving to myself that we can’t do much at all.
What about my hope of regaining column 2 by having 4 8s that could receive the 7? Two of the 8s were covered with immovable 4s, an additional 7 got dropped on another one, and an additional 7 on what we were planning to move! We need 2 free 8s to get our space, and we only have one.
I expressed optimism last round about clearing many spaces, but reality was not at all as I predicted. I was motivated now to duplicate the pre-deal tableau, shuffle the rest, and then deal 10 different sets of 10.
Tallying the 10 by number of spaces that could be created:
4 spaces: 2
3 spaces: 3
2 spaces: 3
1 space: 2
0 spaces: 0
It looks like my prediction was reasonable and bad luck played a big part in our current grim situation, which is not to say that some other line of play would have been preferable.
Under the circumstances, the best I can see to do is make a couple of our potential spaces atomic again, and deal. We can move one seven, and I feel column j has better future potential than column b. Final answer:
cg, ig, dg, jc, deal
It looks like monkey also had the idea of making two of our potential spaces atomic again, but made column e worse instead of better.
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Oops, I’ve just realised I’ve mis-transcribed the cards in column 9. The diamonds should be 8-7 instead of 7-6. This might affect your decision, so I’m happy for you to change your moves if you wish.
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No, I have no desire to change my moves.
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I’m confused… When I look at the latest board now, it looks like “if” is an obvious improvement. But what confuses me is that in making that correction, you took away any copy of what I was looking at before? “The diamonds should be 8-7 instead of 7-6” leaves open the question of what the 8 used to be and what the 6 really is now… The blockchain approach would again be easiest, I think… “The diagram above was wrong. Here is the correct diagram.”
But feel free to make the obvious improvement if it’s obvious to you. Give a summary, an alternative, go on to the next deal. Whatever sequence you see as next.
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I have added the moves if and gj. Please confirm you are happy with this final position. Round 5 bring it on!
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Sure, looks good. Good, given the underlying situation…
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OK by me
I thought I posted this once already? Lets see if it shows up twice.
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IM Bug, your post hasn’t shown up twice AFAICT. Let’s hope the cards we need do not show up too many times on the final deal 🙂
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