Favorite uncommon solitaire variations?

[pkeod]

What are your favorite solitaire variations you like to play with real cards that are not Patience / Klondike?

[Don Boyer]

I frequently play Canfield, a.k.a. Demon.  It's what I play more often than not.

I've also been known to play Clock now and then - I have a variant I play while holding the entire deck in my hands, for times when I want to play a game but have no space to play, but when I learned the game, I also learned from the rulebook it was in that the odds of winning are around 100 to 1, so I don't play it too often!

My father was a big fan of Spider Solitaire.  Some variants that would be more difficult to play in the real world have become very popular on computers and smartphones - Spider is one of them.

[pkeod]

Have you heard of a variation of 40 Thieves which uses a single deck? I am working on balancing a variation like that (calling it Sultan's Guard Solitaire) and am wondering if anyone knows of one which already exists.

[Don Boyer]

Have you heard of a variation of 40 Thieves which uses a single deck? I am working on balancing a variation like that (calling it Sultan's Guard Solitaire) and am wondering if anyone knows of one which already exists.

Have you checked out pagat.com?  They have listings of rules for countless games, including many card games.

[pkeod]

Yes, John is very kind! But he says he's not a solitaire fan but a card game fan so I try to not bug him about solitaire questions. 😇

[54kPlaya]

Well I went around the rules very fast, other than same color and suits dont matter, is there anything more that has been added worth mentioning? from a computer player..I dont know all varitation of solitary.

[Don Boyer]

Well I went around the rules very fast, other than same color and suits dont matter, is there anything more that has been added worth mentioning? from a computer player..I dont know all varitation of solitary.

By the variations, I think he was referring to different ways to play, different versions of solitaire, etc.  The "traditional" solitaire that most Americans know and play the most frequently is actually known as "Klondike", and there are dozens if not hundreds of other ways to play, with entirely different types of solitaire games, some of which have more than one version you can play.  I remember as a kid having a paperback book I bought that had the rules for over a hundred different solitaire games, including a handful of two-deck solitaire games and a few that were "double solitaire" - a solitaire game that's actually played by two people, usually competing with each other to get the best score.  I know little about double solitaire other than that it's typically played by two people, each using their own deck, and in most if not all versions, the players are playing independently of each other until the final tallying of the score - but don't quote me on all that, because as I said, I know little about double solitaire.

[54kPlaya]

Klondike is the only type I know too, my question still stand, and high winrate, like what 100%?  I thought everyone knew, I use windows.

[Don Boyer]

Klondike is the only type I know too, my question still stand, and high winrate, like what 100%?  I thought everyone knew, I use windows.

I'm not entirely clear on what you're asking.  Are you asking what the win rate is for Klondike?  For that, the percentage of "solvable" games is between 82 and 91.5%, the percentage of unplayable games is 0.25% and the percentage of unwinnable games is between 8.5 and 18%.  My numbers come from https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/121305/what-is-the-probability-that-a-solitaire-game-be-winnable

[54kPlaya]

My answers is for the OP in regard to his sultan guard variarion, am I that hard to follow? Anyway, since he hasn't show up to anwer anything I wont lose a single second on that subject, nothing productive is coming out of it. I the future when I answer Ill quote the message even if the message is on top of mine, less confusion.

[EndersGame]

What are your favorite solitaire variations you like to play with real cards that are not Patience / Klondike?

There's plenty to choose from here: https://solitaired.com/games

Other popular solitaire games I enjoy include Yukon and its variations (e.g. Scorpion), Fan games, Busy Aces, Sly Fox, Nestor, Exit, Monte Carlo, and Fifteens.

I'm actually in the middle of writing a series of articles about solitaire games.  You'll find the first one in the forum here, and below it there are links to the others published so far.

Have you heard of a variation of 40 Thieves which uses a single deck? I am working on balancing a variation like that (calling it Sultan's Guard Solitaire) and am wondering if anyone knows of one which already exists.

Baker's Dozen represents a family of games that plays much like Forty Thieves, but with a single deck; it's very good.  Several variations exist, including Portuguese Solitaire and Spanish Patience.