Solitaire Golf Strategy
Learn the strategy to play and winning golf solitaire.
Win at Golf, when you have discarded all the cards and have none
left, tremendously rare. That's why the game is called "Golf" -- you can expect
to leave a few undiscarded cards in nearly every game. So you play and trying to
keep a low average number of left-over cards.
The Strategy
Watch out for the hazards. The hazard is the set of four Aces, which are harder to discard
than most other cards. Consider: if you want to discard an 8 (for example), then you need
either a 7 or a 9 on top of the discard pile, to put the 8 on. That means there are eight
cards in the deck -- four 7's and four 9's -- that can help you discard that 8. But you
can only discard an Ace onto a 2, and there are only four 2's in the deck. If you waste
too many 2's by playing 3's onto them, you'll run out of 2's and never get rid of all of
your Aces. 2's are therefore precious and must be handled carefully.
Like Aces, Kings are difficult to move because they can only go
on Queens. This in turn makes Queens precious, just as 2's are: they mustn't be wasted for
fear of stranding some Kings. And there's a special twist in the rules: you can't play
anything onto a King, not even a Queen. So Queens are also difficult to get rid of,
because they can only be played on Jacks. This means we must be careful not to squander
Jacks.
This kind of care sort of ripples down into the middle ranks. It
seems that if we have to be careful of Jacks, then we have to be careful of 10's and 9's
too. And that's true, but at this point we stop worrying about it so much. There are more
options for moving 10's and 9's; they're less precious.
Any rank will eventually become rare. If your last 7 is on top of
the discard pile, and you are trying to choose between discarding a 6 or an 8 onto it. If
all the 9's have been played already, then you'd better discard the 8; it's your last
chance to do so. With no more 7's or 9's left, playing the 6 would leave the 8 stranded.
Selecting a King. Look for rare cards beneath them that we want
to reveal. The K has an Ace under it; that would be good to expose. Beware of lost
opportunities -- nothing hurts more than discarding the last 2 when the last Ace isn't
available yet.
Nothing can be played onto a King, we must always deal after
discarding one.
Aces can only be discarded onto 2's.
Concentrate especially on uncovering Aces and 2's, and Jacks,
Queens, and Kings. It's harder to move these cards, so make sure they're ready to move
when opportunity knocks.
Discard from longer piles first, if you have no strong reason to
do otherwise. An empty pile is useless, so don't discard the last card from a pile until
you have to.
The goal is to move as many cards as possible from the tableau
into the wastepile. Top cards are available for moving to the wastepile, building up or
down by rank. Building is not circular, and furthermore nothing may be built on a King.
Cards are never moved among the tableaus. |
