History TabletopGame / Solitaire

** The Vista and Windows 7 versions are fully compatible with UsefulNotes/Xbox360 controllers, a feature that isn't described anywhere in help files.

* NintendoHard: For a sedate little card game that comes with most people's computers, solitaire can be surprisingly difficult and many games will end in defeat. For Klondike solitaire, losing is often a certainty, as at least a fifth of all Klondike games are mathematically unwinnable.

Solitaire games were originally played with real playing cards, with some manufacturers even making miniature decks to allow players to play solitaire games with more elaborate layouts or on smaller tables. While computer implementations of solitaire have existed since the days of mainframes, with the growth of home computing in the 1990s, computer solitaire quickly overtook physical solitaire. This is largely due to solitaire card games being bundled with UsefulNotes/MicrosoftWindows, starting with a version of Klondike solitaire in Windows 3.0 in 1990, and later adding TabletopGame/{{Freecell}}, Spider, Pyramid, and TriPeaks in subsequent releases.

* TheComputerIsACheatingBastard: The higher levels of the game (Master, Grandmaster) can do unpleasant things to trip up the unwary and overconfident. If you pull the desired card from a stack to continue a run - say a Red Queen - you can be sure that the ''other'' red queen will emerge almost instantly and will sit there blocking a stack. If you need and get a black seven - the other, un-needed black seven, will pop up and impede progress. You can get three out of four Aces and build the completed stacks with them - then ''every'' card you see will be from the fourth suit for which there is no Ace and therefore no obvious way of removing them as solved. Worse, these cards will sit on the ends of runs preventing the player from redeeming the cards for which they have Aces. Effectively, Microsoft Klondyke will deliberately throw ''lots'' of deck cloggers at you.
* DeckClogger: In the Microsoft game that comes as a bundle on any new PC, the higher levels of the game (Master, Grandmaster) [[TheComputerIsACheatingBastard can do unpleasant things]] to trip up the unwary and overconfident. If you pull the desired card from a stack to continue a run - say a Red Queen - you can be sure that the ''other'' red queen will emerge almost instantly and will sit there blocking a stack. If you need and get a black seven - the other, un-needed black seven, will pop up and impede progress. You can get three out of four Aces and build the completed stacks with them - then ''every'' card you see will be from the fourth suit for which there is no Ace and therefore no obvious way of removing them as solved. Worse, these cards will sit on the ends of runs preventing the player from redeeming the cards for which they have Aces. Effectively, Microsoft Klondyke will deliberately throw ''lots'' of deck cloggers at you.

Solitaire games were originally played with real playing cards, with some manufacturers even making miniature decks to allow players to play solitaire games with more elaborate layouts or on smaller tables. While computer implementations of solitaire have existed since the days of mainframes, with the growth of home computing in the 1990s, computer solitaire quickly overtook physical solitaire. This is largely due to solitaire card games being bundled with UsefulNotes/MicrosoftWindows, starting with a version of Klondike solitaire in Windows 3.0 in 1990, and later adding TabletopGame/{{Freecell}} and Spider in subsequent releases.

* TheComputerIsACheatingBastard: The higher levels of the game (Master, Grandmaster) can do unpleasant things to trip up the unwary and overconfident. If you pull the desired card from a stack to continue a run - say a Red Queen - you can be sure that the ''other'' red queen will emerge almost instantly and will sit there blocking a stack. If you need and get a black seven - the other, un-needed black seven, will pop up and impede progress. You can get three out of four Aces and build the completed stacks with them - then ''every'' card you see will be from the fourth suit for which there is no Ace and therefore no obvious way of removing them as solved. Worse, these cards will sit on the ends of runs preventing the player from redeeming the cards for which they have Aces. Effectively, Microsoft Klondyke will deliberately throw ''lots'' of deck cloggers at you.

* MarketBasedTitle: Outside the United States and Canada [[note]] With the exception of [[UsefulNotes/{{Quebec}} Québec]] [[/note]], these sorts of games are often known as "patience" games. A game bundled with the UsefulNotes/AcornArchimedes, also based on the Klondike variation used in Windows Solitaire, was called !Patience, reflecting the British origin.

Very broadly speaking, the goal of solitaire card games is to take a shuffled set of cards (some games shuffle two or more decks together) and, under the constraints imposed by the game, make decisions about how to play those cards in order to end up in some winning end-game state.

Solitaire games were originally played with real playing cards, with some manufacturers even making miniature decks to allow players to play solitaire games with more elaborate layouts or on smaller tables. Whie computer implementations of solitaire have existed since the days of mainframes, with the growth of home computing in the 1990s, computer solitaire quickly overtook physical solitaire. This is largely due to solitaire card games being bundled with UsefulNotes/MicrosoftWindows, starting with a version of Klondike solitaire in Windows 3.0 in 1990, and later adding TabletopGame/{{Freecell}} and Spider in subsequent releases.

Computer solitaire games also have the advantage of being very accessible and allowing players to quickly launch elaborate multi-deck solitaire games that would be cumbersome to arrange physically. Their popularity has carried over to mobile devices due to the simple drag-and-drop interface requirement being easy to adapt to touchscreens.

Solitaire games were originally played with real playing cards, with some manufacturers even making miniature decks to allow players to play solitaire games with more elaborate layouts or on smaller tables. However, with the growth of home computing in the 1990s, computer solitaire quickly overtook physical solitaire. This is largely due to solitaire card games being bundled with UsefulNotes/MicrosoftWindows, starting with a version of Klondike solitaire in Windows 3.0 in 1990, and later adding TabletopGame/{{Freecell}} and Spider in subsequent releases.

Computer solitaire games also have the advantage of being very accessible and allowing players to quickly launch elaborate multi-deck solitaire games that would be cumbersome to arrange physically. They are also quite popular on mobile devices due to the simple drag-and-drop interface requirement.

* GameMod: You can create themes in Windows 8's solitaire collection without modding into the files, allowing for easy customization.

Wiki/TheOtherWiki has [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_solitaire_card_games a list]] of many of the variants.

Computer solitaire games also have the advantage of being very accessible and allowing players to quickly launch highly elaborate, multi-deck solitaire games that would be cumbersome to arrange physically. It is also quite popular on mobile devices due to the simple drag-and-drop interface requirement.

* NintendoHard: Surprisingly for a sedate little card game that comes with most people's computers. Several variants, including the full four-suit version of Spider Solitaire and Forty Thieves, are the most difficult.

* UnintentionallyUnwinnable: If you make a mistake early in the game without any way of knowing that it was the wrong thing to do, you can accidentally make the game unwinnable. The only reason why this is not "by design" is due to the randomness of the draw.

* LuckBasedMission:
** All solitaire games are luck-based to some extent, due to the randomness of the draw, although the amount of luck required varies and some solitaires are more skill-based than others. Klondike solitaire, the most popular variant, cannot be won more than 82% of the time ''even with perfect play and perfect knowledge'' (which is impossible to have anyway). Microsoft Solitaire Collection added a "solvable deals only" option to prevent people from getting into unwinnable games.
** Most solitaire games have cards which are inaccessible until you achieve the necessary prerequisites. Unfortunately, sometimes those cards ''are'' the necessary prerequisites, in which case you're out of luck.

Solitaire games were originally played with real playing cards, with some manufacturers even making miniature decks to allow players to play solitaire games with more elaborate layouts or on smaller tables. However, with the advent of home computing in the 1990s, computer solitaire quickly overtook physical solitaire. This is largely due to solitaire card games being bundled with UsefulNotes/MicrosoftWindows, starting with a version of Klondike solitaire in Windows 3.0 in 1990, and later adding TabletopGame/{{Freecell}} and Spider in subsequent releases.

Very broadly speaking, the goal of solitaire card games is to take a shuffled set of cards and, under the constraints imposed by the game, make decisions about how to play those cards in order to end up in some winning end-game state.