left border

Solitaire Card Games Suite


The World's
Most Complete

Solitaire Collection

Buy Now!DownloadFeaturesAwardsSupportScreenshotsWhat's New
border

right border    
     
left curve top right curve
left

Solitaire overview

Here is a brief description of what solitaire means.
Solitaire card games or games of patience, as they used to be known, is the category of games played with one or more card decks and which objective is to move all the cards from one determined display to one pile or piles. Playing solitaire has with out doubt its uses. For example playing a solitaire game will keep you company during sleepless nights. For an stressed or worried mind it can be of great ease to relax by playing one or two games of solitaire.

Solitaire games, also known as Patience in Britain, are card games for a single player. Does not exist a precise history of solitaires, but it is probable that solitaires are been born with the card games. The word solitaire is of french origin, and it means patience. The first book on the argument comes printed in 1870. It was Illustrated Games of Patience by lady Adelaide Cadogan, containing 25 games, reprinted many times.

Some historical facts about solitaire card games: it is said that Click here to enlargeone of the first solitaire games to be invented is "Sir Tommy", which was born at the beginning of the nineteenth century or maybe earlier. "Salic Law" gives its name to the fact that the Queens are excluded from active participation in the game. There are solitaires related to some historical characters, such as "Precedence", which was played by French King Henri V; "St Helena", invented to relief Napoleon Bonaparte's tedium or "Roosevelt's Favorite" otherwise known as "Spider" said to be played by President Roosevelt. The "Canfield" solitaire is said to be invented by the owner of a casino in Saratoga which offered the player of the game five dollars for each he could move to the foundation piles.

Nowadays, the most famous solitaire of them all is "Klondike", which takes its name due to the disposition of the cards on the tableau, which reminds the form of the "Klondike" mountain.

In the U.S. Mrs. E.D. Cheney published the successive year the book Patience. The publishing house Dick & Fitzgerald in New York published in 1883 a series of books dedicated to solitaire games ("Dick's Games of Patience") and a second series was published in 1898. In the 1890's a great populariser of the game was Miss Whitemore Jones, whose 5 volumes on solitaires went reprint for thirty years.

right
left bottom bottom right bottom
 
left curve top right curve
left

- "A game of patience has many virtues. It sharpens the wits, it develops judgement, it helps the power of concentration and, in this way, assists in the development of that elusive quality which for want of a better name we call card sense. Above all, a game of patience has a great moral value because, when it is properly approached, it calls for the self-discipline of being honest with oneself." (George F. Hervey, Card Games for One, 1965, ISBN 0340055383, p. 7)
 

- Solitaires "have a marvellous capacity both to soothe and challenge the mind of the player" (Trevor Day and The Diagram Group, Collins Gem Patience Card Games, HarperCollins Publishers, 1996, ISBN 0004720164, p. 3)
 

- "Patience is the mental equivalent of jogging: its purpose is to tone the brain up and get rid of unsociable mental flabbiness." (David Parlett, The Penguin Book of Patience, Penguin Books, 1980, ISBN 0140663461, p. 11)
 

- "Everybody should cultivate the power of self entertainment. No matter what may be our domestic and social surroundings there come times to each of us when, unless we are able to be 'company to ourselves', we must inevitably suffer from loneliness or ennui. It is at such moments that the game of Solitaire (to which our English cousins give the very significant name of Patience) becomes something much more than a frivolous diversion." (George Hapgood, Solitaire and Patience, Philadelphia, 1917, p. 5)
 

- "There is a charm and solace about Solitaire which is beginning to be more generally and deservedly appreciated. It affords an attractive pastime and a grateful relief when overtaxed by too assiduous application to business or study; it serves to fill up idle hours, and to soothe the unrest of the unfortunate victim of insomnia. It offers advantages that are conspicuously wanting in all other card games: -No need for waiting for one or more companions to make up a game, but you take out a pack or two of cards from the drawer and begin the game just when the desire to do so presents itself, -you are all there; and no opposing player to thwart your best intentions and ruin your well-planned endeavors with every card you play, -you have it all own way." (William B. Dick, Dick's Games of Patience or Solitaire with Cards, New York, 1883, p. 3)

right
left bottom bottom right bottom
 
left curve top right curve
left


Free Download

 

SolSuite 2022's latest version 22.4
April 10, 2022

 

right
left bottom bottom right bottom
     
     

Buy Now  -  Download Now  -  Solitaires List  -  Solitaire  -  News & RSS Feed
SolSuite Champions  -  Other Games  -  Contact Us  -  Privacy  -  Spider Solitaire

Copyright © 1998-2022 TreeCardGames and its licensors. All rights reserved.
 

     
  bottom