Solitaire, which is also known as patience in England, is a hugely popular single player card game. Solitaire is not actually a single game, solitaire is in reality a family of games, there are hundreds of different ways to play solitaire and loads of different versions and variations of the game using either one or more decks of cards shuffled together, each individual version of the game has different rules and different skill levels. The most basic versions of solitaire can be picked up and learnt fairly easily by most card players. However the more complicated versions of solitaire could take the player hours to complete and are also much harder to learn.
Solitaire games typically entail dealing out the cards from a deck, in some game two decks are used, the cards are normally shuffled first before set out into a preset layout on a tabletop or other flat surface, and then a player attempts to reorganize the deck of cards by rank and suit using a sequence of card moves, transferring the cards from one position to another whilst keeping with in the rules of the game. The ultimate goal of most versions of solitaire is to build complete foundation piles with all of the cards in perfect suit order, but first you need to achieve access to all of the facedown cards.
The history of solitaire originates in France, but its exact history and origins are uncertain. Some people like to think solitaire was first invented by the French prisoners, held in the royal prisons of France while others claim solitaire was made-up by a French aristocrat during a length of time in solitary confinement in the Bastille sometime at some point in the 18th century. The first recorded collection of solitaire games has been attributed to Lady Adelaide Cadogan in her book titled Illustrated Games of Patience, it was first published around 1870 and has been reprinted numerous times since. Before this date there was no other literature with reference to solitaire. There have been numerous variations of the original solitaire game over the years and at the present there is close to five hundred different solitaire games.
Today solitaire can be played on many electrical devices such as your home computer or mobile phone. Basic forms of solitaire such as Klondike and FreeCell come pre-installed with every new version of Microsoft Windows and the most up-to-date operating system Windows Vista also comes with a fun version of Spider solitaire. If you enjoy playing card games, then Solitaire is a great game that is sure to keep you entertained for hours and with all those different variations your bound to find a version you enjoy.
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