Learning Strategy from Solitaire: 1) Klondike

I decided to have a little fun in writing my next series of articles. I play Microsoft Solitaire games as I start my daily workout on a stationary bike. And since I have been doing this daily for years while working daily writing and speaking on Sun Tzu’s strategy, it became obvious to me that these games taught important lessons in practical strategy. Why are games, even those as simple as solitaire, entertaining? Because we are mentally hardwired to use our strategic skills. I have written several articles about how strategic success releases certain pleasurable brain hormones. In this series of articles, I will demonstrate how deeply strategy is embedded into the simplest games because our brains have been designed and adapted to these principles.

The most familiar game is called Klondike. When I was growing up, it was what we all called “solitaire.” You should all recognize it from the board above. Let us look at its elements as a game of practical strategy.

The Element of Mission

All strategy needs a Mission (see this article), and all games have a mission. The mission in Klondike is to get the cards from the playing field and deck, up into the scoring area, technically call the Foundation, the four slots in the upper right of the image above. There four slots are initially empty. The first card that goes on each of these slots in the aces of each suit.

The goal of all strategy is to build up our position. That is exactly the goal here. After getting an ace of a given suit, we follow with the two, then the three, then the four. Each of the four aspects of our position ends, appropriately, with the king. Positions must be built from the bottom up, starting with the lowest card, the one we call an ace.

But the analogy with Mission doesn’t stop there. There are four slots and four card suits in our decks. Those suits psychologically represent the four key types of positions in our lives. Diamonds represent our financial positions. Clubs represent our security, that is, our ability to defend existing positions. Hearts represent our emotional positions, and how satisfying our personal relationships are. Spades represent our place in the working world, the professional respect we earn.

Each game is a new strategic Campaign. In Microsoft Solitaire, each game has a specific mission. Missons set out specific goals. Some goals are to get a certain number of points. Others to play off a certain card. Others involving clearing the board. What is nice about this is that we can be certain that the game can be “won” in terms of that specific mission.

Ground

The element of Ground (see this article) is the playing board, called the Tableau, consisting of seven columns of cards. Each column represents a different area that needs to be explored. The first column has one card, the second two cards, the third three, on so on until the last row, which has seven cards. All of the cards are face down, except for the last in each row, which is face up.

Any current layout of cards, which includes both our Gound and our Position, built up from aces, is your current Situation in the campaign. Positions in the game advance with every pay on the aces, which the Situations develop with moves on the Ground.

The face-down cards are the hidden resources of the ground. The face-up cards are known resources. We improve our position by exploring the ground, that is, first discovering in resources by turning over cards. We can only turn over the cards, however, if we find a way to use them, that is, move the known resources to another area. The longer the column, the deeper the Ground that needs to be explored.

As a symbol for the competitive world, these ground situations are eventually organized into four kingdoms just like society naturally builds hierarchies. Resources of the Ground can be used to build up our Ground situations, or they can also be used to develop our Ground position. We have to decide how to use resources strategically. While eventually, we want them all in our Mission Position but having them in our Ground Position can be more important at a given time.

When a column is emptied, only a king can start a new one. A king can only be moved from the column it is into an empty column. Kingdoms on the Ground built top down, starting with the king and working down to an ace. However, Ground kingdoms must be built out of complementary opposites. The opposites are the two suit colors, red heart and diamonds and black clubs and spades. A warrior or skilled black king takes a rich or loving red queen. A rich or loving red king takes a black queen. A red queen takes a black jack, and a black queen takes a red jack, and so on. Once a card is covered, either on the ground or as a position by another card, it is committed and cannot be used again until uncovered.

Psychologically, complementary opposites are needed on the ground. Stategic strength demands a union of opposites. The weaknesses of one suit must be complemented by the strengths of the different suits. Every suit has strengths and weaknesses. A kingdom requires a variety of skills.

Climate

The element of Climate is represented by the deck of cards called the Stockpile. Those cards are turned over, either one or three cards at a time. The pile of cards turned over from the Stockpile is known as the Waste Pile. Strategically, each turn of cards from the deck is an event. Events expose new resources, that is, turned-up cards.

A card that we can use on the Ground is a strategic Opportunity. When we are turning over cards three at a time, we expose a hidden opportunity by using the current opportunity. Since cards are hidden again by the next turn of cards from the deck, there is a limited Window of Opportunity. And, like our real lives, the use of a given opportunity changes our future opportunities. The use of a red king destroyed any future opportunity to use a black one, which, given our situation, may be more useful.

Most events do not create opportunities. Every use of an Opportunity “shuffles” the deck, exposing new cards on the next pass through the deck. Since we can usually see all three cards in a turn, we can see cards that we might want to get in the next pass through the deck. We can pick and choose which cards we want to expose in the next pass of through the deck. Psychologically, this represents out ability to foresee certain opportunities if we can get in position for them.

The game can even recognize the limited time we have to build up our positions. Time is limited by how many times we can pass through the deck. It is most frequently limited in gambling when we turn over one card at a time. We can only pass through the deck once.

Methods

In practical strategy, methods are mostly defined how you interact with other people. However, in solitaire, the interactions between other “people” are the interactions among the cards as characters in the game. These interactions are controlled by the ruless, so, in a sense, the player’s only interactions are with those who make the rules. However, those rules allow plenty of strategic decisions by the player aming the key elements of Missions, Climate, and Ground.

One advantage in playing Microsoft Solitaire is also its shortcoming. In the game, we can take back our moves to pursue another course. This is especially important in Klondike. We know all games can be won in terms of the particular goals for the game. If we find ourselves at a dead end, we can go back to change our past decisions. For example, instead of moving a card to the Foundation, we can keep it on the Tableau. Or instead of moving a card from the Stockpile, we can leave the moved open for a card that will be later turned over in the Tableau.

Command

The decision-maker in this game is obviously the player. This is the element of Command. The ability to go back in time for a redo is not like real life, but it is instructive about the importance of command. It teaches us how to course of future events is not determine by Ground and Climate as much as it is by our decisions as the game player.

However, the game differs from real life here in one important way: players have no interactions with other players. This means that many of the key methods of strategy, such as finding shared missions, do not apply. This is, of course, true for all forms of solitaire.

Conclusions

If I were to devise a card desk for Klondike to teach the methods of strategy, it would only require making the symbolism already hidden in the game clearer. We would name the suits Money, Defense, Love, and Respect. Players would set their goals for each type of Position they want at the beginning of the game, but they could change it during the game. Scoring would be based on their individual priorities for the four different types of positions. To be controversial, I would make the most valuable card for women players in the hierarchy the queens, but kings would remain the highest card for men. We would call the Foundation, our Positions. We would call the Tableau, our Ground. We would call the Stockpile, our Climate. The Discard Pile would become Recurring Events.

And, of course, I would design it so that it could support a number of different players and those players could cooperate or oppose each other depending on the relationships they developed during the game. Their choice of different goals would encourage certain types of cooperation, but opportunities and resource can only be exchanged when they are uncommitted, that is, uncovered. Players can try to attack the positions of others, stealing their cards, but only at a cost to their positions, defending on their relative strength in Defense.

I would love to hear your ideas on such a game.