WinABit is not just a game of chance. You have to make decisions, and if you loose a game, it might be because you made a mistake somewhere. The objective is to keep as many cards as possible in your hand but still be able to turn all play stack cards face up. ![]() WinABit and Klondike solitaire both start with seven play stacks on the table but arranged a little differently. Klondike has 21 face down, WinABit 24. The play is similar, but more is allowed in WinABit.
Standard Klondike solitaire is purely a game of chance, and a little discouraging, or at least it is for me. It's designed to be very hard to win, taking something like 20 tries for one success. So I changed the rules to get a game that for me is more fun to play. With WinABit there is reasonable hope of winning even for a beginner,
And the objective is more upbeat. How high a score you can get? Or better yet if you keep a record, can you learn with time and improve your score?
Your score is the number of cards left in your hand deck when all play stack cards are face up. Or if you had to "cheat" to finish, you get a negative score equal to the number of cheats.
It takes a while to learn this game, apparently something like a thousand plays or more. As you can see at the right, I've played the game almost 1100 times, now, and it looks as though my average score is still going up. I've gotten in the habit of playing a couple games last thing at night just before lights out. I got a perfect score of 21 once. That was game 212, and I thought at the time that maybe I'd keep playing until it happened again. But 865 games later I've had two scores of 20 and no 21. My worst loosing score was a -11, but that was game 4 before I'd caught on to how to play. I definitely have fewer negative scores now. And really interesting is that if someone is watching me play I seem to make more mistakes. Hum. Rules:
Standard Klondike solitaire is described at Solitaire Central:
To make it easier to win, WinABit allows the following plays:
Explanation of Rule 4 with Example of Finesse:
Explanation of rule 5: The games that I've played to date and the data shown are for rule 5a. Compared to 5b, this increases the number of negative scores and tends to penalize a player who makes mistakes. I think I'll switch to rule 5b, though. That will require the player to keep thinking about what hand deck cards to play, or not—which is more consistent with the rest of WinABit solitaire. |