Baker's Game

Baker's Game
A Patience game

A partially completed game of Baker's Game on PySolFC
Alternative names Brain Jam
Named variants FreeCell
Family Freecell
Deck Single 52-card
See also Glossary of solitaire

Baker's Game is a Patience game (or card Solitaire game) similar to FreeCell (and predating it) which differs in the fact that sequences are built by suit, instead of by alternate color.[1]

History

One of the oldest ancestors of Baker's Game is Eight Off. In the June 1968 edition of Scientific American, Martin Gardner described in his "Mathematical Games" column a game by C. L. Baker, that is now known as Baker's Game. Gardner wrote "The game was taught to Baker by his father, who in turn learned it from an Englishman during the 1920's".[2]

The description of Baker's Game in the "Mathematical Games" column inspired Paul Alfille to create FreeCell and he coded it for the PLATO educational computer system, which ended up becoming more popular than Baker's Game.[3]

Rules

(Adapted from the FreeCell's article Rules.)

Construction and layout:

Building during play:

Moves:

Victory:

Statistics

Freecell Solver, a solver for some variants of Patience game, including Baker's Game,[5] was run on the first 69 million deals of Baker's Game based on the Microsoft FreeCell deals, in order to collect statistics.[6] The solver was run using a preset that guarantees an accurate verdict. Out of the 10 million deals, 7,431,962 were solvable (making for an average win rate of 74.3%), with a maximal iterations count of 893,777 iterations. The remaining unsolved deals yielded a maximal iterations count of 69 iterations.

Automated solvers

Some automated solvers of card solitaire are capable of solving Baker's Game layouts:

References

  1. Freecell FAQ and Links
  2. Gardner, Martin (June 1968). "Mathematical Games". Scientific American. Vol. 218 no. 6. p. 114.
  3. Kaye, Ellen (October 17, 2002). "One Down, 31,999 to Go: Surrendering to a Solitary Obsession". New York Times.
  4. Baker's Game's Rules on Pretty Good Solitaire
  5. Freecell Solver's features list
  6. fc-solve-discuss : Message: “Solving Statistics for the first 10 Million MS-Freecell-like Baker's Game Deals”
  7. Freecell FAQ
  8. Freecell Solver’s Features List
  9. Berto's Brain Jam Page
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