Steve Brown’s Game: Round 5(1)

Here is the start of round 5 after Steve deals the last ten cards from the stock.

In some sense, the last round is the “simplest” to calculate. Since the stock is empty, there are no more possible surprises associated with 10 new cards appearing simultaneously rather than sequentially. Most of the time, an empty stock implies the winning chances are either very very good or very very bad. Whereas, in previous rounds we have to make do with general considerations and “fuzzy evaluations” such as “we have good winning chances but not enough to justify sending over a Backgammon doubling cube with the ‘2’ face up”.

Of course, one can argue the last round is “hardest” to calculate since there are so many cards. To play the last round well you will need a LOT of calculation. Steve correctly points out the ability to calculate is a necessary (but not sufficient!) condition to achieving a high win rate at the Royal Game.

Another peculiarity of the last round is that most of the time at least one full suit will be visible (or it has already been moved to the foundations). For instance, every card in Hearts can be found in column 1, 5 or 8. Obviously we wanna work out if we can guarantee removing at least one suit. Most of the time, once you are able to clear any complete suit, everything else will collapse.

In the next post I will discuss how Steve proceeds from here. You may wish to analyse this game state for yourself and come to your own conclusions. If you do so then I recommend you give only a “general plan” rather than specific moves. Also, stop as soon as you turn over any face-down card. Your answer would look something like the following: (this is a template only and does not apply to the current hand).

(1) obtain two empty columns (2) Tidy up so we have a complete Heart suit missing only the King (3) Dump the K of Spades into an empty column (4) Win back another empty column (5) Complete Hearts (6) burn all empty columns to turnover a card in column 8.