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Learn about and play freecell the NetCELL way

Misc opinions... some shared by others... some not... subject to change

Spirit of the Game

We hear this once in a while, usually in the wrong context

Freecell is a game of solitaire. There's rules of play for the game which you follow. But you choose your own way of following them

You choose for yourself whether undo, retry, peeking at cards, is allowed. This can vary depending on your mood at the time

Spirit of the Competition

For competition purposes, House Rules need to be established and its expected that players follow these rules. its not possible by the house to enforce all the rules. for the ones that cannot be enforced its the honor system... and we know how well that works

looking up solutions, using a solver, or getting assistance from someone else would seem to be de facto rules... but should be included in the house rules

more things to consider in house rules

Use of notes to remember lookahead
Use of cards to visualize lookahead
Use of undo by the freecell player
fewest moves
fastest times

An unwritten rule is not a rule. House Rules will avoid conflicts

Streak Play at freecell.net

Streak Play...

you are are presented with random games in your selected variant
your streak is the number of consecutive wins you acheive
a streak ends if you lose a game
its sudden death, retries don't count

Stats are maintained for your daily streak ie by calendar day, current streak which spans days, and your best streak

There's an implicit assumption that the player that has the highest streak is a better player

This may be true, but...

A streak may be ended by an unwinnable. Thats like '00' on the roulette wheel. A perfect streak is impossible for variants that contain unwinnable games
Players are playing a different set of games
Players are playing games in a different order

For these reasons it is an interesting stat but not truly representative of the players skill vs another players skill

Why is the next game to be played selected randomly

Knowing the game that you will play next can be used to your advantage. This might be looking up the stats for the game to determine difficulty, or actually playing it in advance to determine the moves

There are 32768 possible game numbers for each variant so it randomly selects a number in the range 0 thru 32767

Chances are slim, but non-zero, that the game will be one that you have played before, or recently

Is there a record of the games played

The games you play are logged but not in a way allowing selecting a game you have not played before

It doesn't keep track of the last game you played, or how many times you played it, or which attempt was your first win

Of course your play is counted in the overall stats but otherwise not tracked (ok... briefly in Recent Play. And in the Play Logs (which only go back to Sep 2021))

It could (i suppose) select the next if you are playing again for the same variant. But if you switch variants it doesn't know the last so it can't. So it selects a game number randomly

It would be nice if it could cycle thru the games, from 0 thru 32767, so you can know whether you have played all the games in a variant

Same game twice in a row

Occasionally a player gets the same game more than once in a day... ie same variant, same game number. This happens 10s of times a day but isn't usually noticed unless it happens conscutively.

You would think the chance of this happening would be 1/32768 * 1/32768 ( 1 in 1073741824). This is true for the same game number coming up twice in a row but this is not really what is happening. eg a player gets game number 1234, 2 minutes later they get game number 1234 again. Between the firsrt 1234 and the second 1234 many other game numbers (say 200) have been given out to other players. So the chance that the second is 1234 is maybe 200/32768 (about 1 in 164). That's probably not the correct calculation but just saying the second 1234 is the 200th game after the first so the chance is better. One could also say that if its truly random then that makes no difference. But its pseudo-random, so it does. etc...

Plus, must consider that its the same player that gets it

Plus, there's usually more than 32768 plays per day

There's no way around this happening without changing the randomness. Maybe change so that each variant, or even each player, has their own psedo-random stream.

Elo

There are millions of games to be played and just a few thousand players playing them about 2/3 of whom play 8x4 exclusively

Games are not equivalent to players. The 'exchange' should consider this. Maybe K factor?

Game Elo should be set on first play

Game Elo should be set to 0 if the game is unwinnable

If an 'unwinnable' game is won, set Elo as for first play, then as first win

It may get tweaked...

based on current plays/wins for the game to help move it closer to an appropiriate value
based on current average Elo of games played for the variant
based on a theoretical average Elo for the variant
for other more subjective reasons

Plays where game Elo is 0 should be excluded from all Elo calculations

Plays where player Elo is 0 should be excluded from all Elo calculations

First card dealt

I noticed some time ago that the first card dealt is a clue to the game number eg if it is the KH then game number will be in the range 0 thru 1195. This is always true for level 10. Its a side effect of using consecutive game number as random seed.

I posted this on the discussion board here

The shuffle adjustments for the other levels may cause a different first card for some games

As expected game numbers in range 26312-27507 have 8D as first card dealt

What happens when same game number dealt to different layout

Game number and level determine the shuffle. The deal depends on the layout, the number of columns.

If you look at 5x6 1234-5 and 6x6 1234-5 you'll notice that its the same shuffle, just shifted due to the number of columns

5x6 1234-5

6x6 1234-5

How level effects shuffle

Level 10 deals are unadjusted.

Lower levels adjust so the more high cards are injected earlier in the shuffle so that more low cards are playable sooner

Higher levels adjust so the more lower cards are injected earlier in the shuffle so that more high cards are playable sooner

The change in the algorithm for levels other than 10, because it involves an extra random call, causes the base shuffle to be significantly different than the unadjusted level 10 shuffle. You'll notice the level 9 and level 11 deals are more alike each other than the unadjusted level 10. Levels other than 10 are not only adjusted but based on an altogether different shuffle. Unexpected, but nothing wrong with that. Its an interesting feature of NetCELL's algorithm

Note that this is not a card swap. When the first adjusted card is injected in to the shuffle, the remainder of the shuffle is completely different

5x6 1234-10 (unadjusted)
This is the deal presented for play