Card Games For Dummies. Barry Rigal

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СКАЧАТЬ the ♥A is stuck, which leaves only diamonds. The ♦2 comes out easily enough by putting the ♣J on the queen. However, the ♦3 is under the ♠Q and the ♠J, so you take the ♦2 out, which ends the first cycle.

      Starting the next cycle and ending the game

You keep your foundations, but now you pick up the cards left in the tableau, shuffle them well (they were in sequence, so an imperfect shuffle can restrict your mobility), and deal them out in threes again. If you have two cards left over, make one pair; if one card is left over after you put the cards out in threes, as at the start, make two pairs out of the last four cards.

      You have three cycles to get out, and if you fail at the last turn, you’re allowed one cheat, or merci, by moving a single card in the tableau; whether you want to pull one card up or push one card down is up to you.

Practicing Poker Patience

      Poker Patience is, in theory, an undemanding Solitaire. It takes only a minute or two to play, and you can approach the game frivolously or seriously. I do both in this section.

      To start, you need to know the ranks of Poker hands (in other words, what beats what). In ascending order, the ranks are as follows:

       One pair: Two of a kind

       Two pair: Such as two 5s and two 10s

       Three of a kind: Also known as trips

       Straight: Five cards in consecutive order; for example, ace through 5 or 7 to jack

       Flush: Five cards of the same suit

       Full house: Combination of three of a kind and a pair

       Four of a kind: Also known as quads

       Straight flush: A straight with all the cards in the same suit

      

Aces can be either high or low — your choice.

      The objective of the game is to lay out 25 cards to form a square, five cards by five cards. In the process, you want to make ten poker hands (five across and five down) and score as many points as possible.

Scoring 200 points (using my scoring system) counts as a win. Various scoring systems are shown in Table 2-1.

      The U.S. scoring system has a major flaw (which has been corrected in the U.K. scoring method), based on the fact that although flushes are rarer in Poker, they’re considerably easier to play for in Poker Patience than straights. To fix this problem, you can reverse the scoring table, as in the version that I recommend.

TABLE 2-1 Scoring Systems for Poker Patience

Poker Hand	U.S. Scoring	U.K. Scoring	Barry’s Scoring
A pair	2	1	2
Two pair	5	3	5
Three of a kind	10	6	10
Straight	15	12	25
Flush	20	5	15
Full house	50	10	50
Four of a kind	70	16	70
Straight flush	100	30	100

To start, turn over one card face-up and then go on to the next, building your grid in any direction you like — up and down or right and left.

      

Although you can put any card anywhere you like in the grid, and you can expand the cards out in any direction you like, each card must touch another card. Whether you put it adjacent to another card or link it diagonally by touching the corner of another card is up to you.

      

After many years of playing Poker Patience, I’ve decided that the best way to play (particularly when using my scoring table) is for straights to be set out in one direction (vertically or horizontally) and full houses or four of a kinds in the other direction. If you take my advice and decide for straights to go in the horizontal rows, you have excellent reasons to put the cards in columns either with themselves or with numbers five less than or five more than themselves. By making this separation, you help the formation of straights.

      When playing Poker Patience, sooner or later you run into a useless or unplayable card. When this happens, don’t panic; all you have to do is start a junk row or junk column. Inevitably, at least one row or column won’t score as much as you want it to.

Look at the layout in Figure 2-10 to see the game theory at work. The matrix is updated after every two cards, although each card is turned over individually. After ten cards, the basic structure is going well. The nucleus of the straights is fine on the horizontal lines, and all the pairs are matched up.

In Figure 2-11, you can put the ♠9 on the bottom row, but completing the straight and collecting points always produces a warm, fuzzy feeling.

      FIGURE 2-10: A hand of Poker Patience after ten cards.

      FIGURE 2-11: Don’t be tempted by the bottom row. Go for the points!

Play continues in Figure 2-12. The ♥8 could’ve gone under the ♣3, but it seems premature to abandon the right-hand column. The ♠Q scores the full house, so abandon the straight in the fourth row.

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