![]() ![]() In any case, one of my victories can safely be described as an EARNING. The term GRANNIE was apparently coined by a Scrabble expert – if you get all the power tiles then even your grandma can’t rot13(shpx) it up. Not exactly walkovers, but I would expect even my grandma will have a legit chance of winning sans undo. ![]() ![]() I should point out one or two hands were grannies. But if anyone accuses NM of doing the same to corroborate my claims I don’t wanna hear about it. I had similar results for a number of different programs.Īdmittedly I may have tilted after a few games and failed to play to the best of my ability. Whereas for random hands, NM should practically always win at least one in 50. Only for 2 hands did NM manage to win at least once. NM played each hand 50 times, for a total of 500 hands. ![]() Bad BeatĪs you might have guessed, I recorded the identity of every card in each of the 10 hands and ran Ninja Monkey’s algorithm. Needless to say, if a Spider Solitaire program penalises a player who wins a few too many with undo/restart, then you can guess how it will treat a player who wins a few too many without these privileges. I did manage to win all 10 games, but most of them were practically unwinnable without undo/restart. Note that the software forbids undoing 2 or more moves in a row (and single undo is illegal after dealing a row or removing a suit). I then made a serious effort to win 10 consecutive games for the first time – using RESTART if necessary. However, one of my recent losses cut a little too close to the bone. Initially I thought this was kosher after some “experimentation”. The certain online server in question is this one. I write this with a heavy heart – one of my readers plays a certain online server, which I now suspect to be biased.If you are serious about improving your game then all bets are off: your win rate is irrelevant and this is most definitely worth paying attention to. If you are winning above 20% then this is probably relevant. If you are stuck at 10-20% win rate then the bias is either non-existent, or doesn’t concern you.I tested this on an earlier version of Ninja Monkey’s code, not the one I’m currently using now for the current game.I am nowhere near being in a position to submit a paper to Journal of the American Statistical Association. what is the meaning of statistically-significant, Komolgorov-Smirnov test, etc). A conclusive proof will entail some detailed knowledge of statistics (e.g.I have no convincing explanation of what a software developer would gain by rigging the RNG.Oh, did I mention I am returning to work on Monday? In any case, if you are intelligent enough to play decently at the four-suit level then you are intelligent enough to draw your own conclusions. Ideally, if time permits, I would prefer to play 100 games instead of 10. The point of this article is to merely explain why I believe many programs are biased, and I am not claiming conclusive proof. Secondly, I don’t have very many data points.Once you reach that ability you also need a “burn-in period” i.e., play enough hands to let the software deduce you have a good very aptitude for the game. Fortunately undo/restart is permissable (but not reject). In particular you must be able to win practically every game at the four-suit level with enough perseverance and skill. You will need a very good aptitude at the game. Firstly, I don’t expect regular players to be able to reproduce my results.I assume we are always playing at the four-suit level (although it is possible to perform similar experiments with less than four suits). Following the rot13(erirefr fuvg fnaqjvpu) principle, I will start with a large number of caveats, then bring in the good stuff, and finally summarise these caveats. I won’t expect regular readers to agree with my POV, but at least they can hopefully see where I am coming from. Let me state at the outset this is only my belief, and it comes with a number of caveats. Apologies if this comes across as a broken record, but “spider-software-bashing” is what inspired me to create this blog in the first place. Biased means if a player wins too many games, then the software will stack the cards against him in subsequent deals. I believe many Spider Solitaire programs are biased – both for mobile phone and PC. ![]()
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