Addiction Solitaire is a new card game that is bound to make players… addicted. The premise of the game is very simple. All you have to do is arrange the cards in ascending order, starting with the deuces on the left and ending with the Kings. But in its simplicity lies the difficulty. Although it is a straightforward game, mindlessly shifting the cards will get you nowhere. You need to plan all your moves ahead or you risk locking the game and making it impossible to win.
Addiction Solitaire - The game setting
Addiction Solitaire uses a standard 52-card deck. After shuffling the deck, all the cards are dealt to form 4 rows on the tableau, each with 13 cards (the equivalent of all the cards in a suit). Once the tableau is set, the aces are removed from the game, leaving 4 spaces amidst the rows.
The players can use those spaces to shift the cards around, following certain rules. The goal is to rearrange the cards by suit and in ascending order. To win the game, each row must contain only cards of a single suit, and they must be in value order, starting with the deuces on the left and ending with the Kings on the right.
Rules and how to play
To rearrange the cards by their value, the players must use the spaces left by the aces on the tableau. However, they cannot move the cards randomly.
A card can only fill an empty space if it is of the same suit and one rank higher than the card immediately to the left. The card to the right of the space is irrelevant. For example, a space between a 7 of spades and a 5 of diamonds can only be filled with an 8 of spades.
Since there are no cards with a rank higher than Kings, a space immediately to the right of them cannot be filled and becomes unavailable. Likewise, the spaces at the beginning of each row can only be filled with deuces.
The players can shuffle the cards on the tableau up to three times. Partial sequences that are already set in the right order on the left side of each row will not be shuffled. This means that all the deuces that are already at the beginning of the rows will stay in place as well as the complete or partial sequences following them.
The players win the game if they organize the deck by suit and in the right order successfully and they will lose when they still have cards to be rearranged but the empty spaces are all to the right of Kings.
Tips to win at Addiction Solitaire
Balance your sequences
Although it may be tempting to complete a row right away or even to try to rearrange the tableau one row at a time, it is counterproductive.
In practice, you would be concentrating the empty slots on the right side of the tableau and, most importantly, to the right side of the Kings. By doing so, you would be left with fewer options to move the remaining cards around and to get them to their right position.
Ideally, you should try to balance the sequences on each row to keep as many options available as possible.
Avoid concentrating the empty slots to the right of a King
A space to the right of a king cannot be filled with any card and becomes useless. Therefore, there is no gain in emptying more slots following the first empty one. In fact, it will only reduce your options to move the cards around and increase the chance that you will have to use one of the available shuffles before you intended to.
For example, if you have a King followed by an empty slot and then a 3 of hearts, avoid removing the three from that position. If you keep it there, it might become useful to eventually place a 4 of hearts in front of it. However, if you remove it, you will then have two empty slots in front of a King leaving you with only 2 spaces available on the whole tableau to shift the cards around.
Think carefully about which deuce to choose
In a game of Addiction Solitaire, the deuces are the cards that begin the sequences and the only ones that can occupy a slot at the beginning of a row.
If you want to increase your chances of winning you should not pick one randomly to start a row whenever you have the opportunity. Try to think several moves ahead to see which of the four would help you progress the most in the game.
Let's say you have one row starting with a 3 of hearts and another one starting with two empty slots. You could fill those two slots with the deuce and the 3 of spades, for example. However, if you fill the first one with the deuce of hearts, you can place the 3 of hearts next to it, unlocking another empty slot for a deuce in a different row.
