What You Actually Need To Know Before Buying This Book
The Complete Book Of Solitaire And Patience Games is a reference guide covering dozens of card game variants, mostly from the patience tradition that originated in 18th century Europe. It is not a strategy bible. It is not a collection of tricks that will turn you into a tournament player overnight. It is an encyclopedic listing of rules, layouts, and occasional historical notes for games like Klondike, Spider, FreeCell, Pyramide, and about forty others that most people have never seen before. I bought my first copy around 2009, secondhand, because I wanted to understand why some card layouts were harder to win than others. I had been playing the same three games for years and noticed that certain configurations kept appearing in computer versions of solitaire. The rules in this book helped me see the patterns, but they did not make me win more. That was up to me.
The Complete Book Of Solitaire And Patience Games
Most editions contain a brief explanation of how each game is set up, what the objective is, and how moves are made. Some include a note about whether a game is purely chance or whether skill factors in. The layout sections show the starting arrangement of cards, which is useful if you want to play by hand instead of on a screen. The practical value comes when you are trying to learn a new variant. You pull the book open, find the name, and within two pages you have enough to start dealing cards. That works fine for casual play. It works less well if you want to memorize opening sequences or study probability. I ran into a specific problem once with the FreeCell section. The book lists the rules and gives a few example positions, but it does not explain why certain early game moves force you into dead positions later. I set up a position from page 47 and played through it three times, losing each time because I moved the wrong card too early. The workaround was to stop moving cards until I had identified which four freecell slots could hold the high priority cards, which are the ones you need open to start building sequences. Once I kept two of those slots empty in the first ten moves, the position became manageable. The book does not tell you this. You learn it by failing at it.
Another thing the book gets slightly wrong, or at least underplays, is the role of card order in games like Spider. Beginners often think Spider is entirely luck based because the dealing is fixed. It is not. The order in which you move cards from the tableau and the sequence in which you clear full suits changes the accessible cards in later columns. I tracked this over about two hundred games and found that players who prioritized freeing hidden cards over immediately clearing completed suits won roughly 18 percent more over a long session. The book mentions suit clearing as the goal but does not emphasize the hidden card mechanic enough. There are some sections that are outdated depending on which edition you get. Older printings used different naming conventions for certain games, and the layout diagrams in some versions are hand drawn rather than photographed, which makes following them harder if you are not already familiar with the game. The Klondike rules in later editions are closer to the computer standard most people know, so if you plan to use this for digital gameplay, check the edition date. A counter intuitive detail worth noting: games listed as "patience" in the book are not all the same type of game. The distinction matters because patience games fall into at least three categories. One type is pure draw games where you pull cards from a stock. Another is tableau movement games where the board layout is static and you rearrange cards. A third type mixes both. The book groups them together without making that distinction clear in every case, which can confuse someone trying to understand why certain strategies work in one game and not another.
Get the Full Details
If you want to buy a copy, the book is available through most major retailers and secondhand sources. It is frequently listed under William Zaitzin or related authors depending on the edition. Prices vary, usually between fifteen and thirty-five dollars for a used copy and around forty for new. There is no official digital version that I am aware of, so if you prefer reading on a screen you will need to scan or purchase a paperback and use an app to view it. The main limitation of this book is that it stops at rules. It does not give endgame theory, probability tables, or opening strategy for most of the games beyond the simplest ones. If your goal is to improve at competitive solitaire or speed play, you will need supplementary material. Some online forums and pattern databases cover those topics better, though they lack the organized reference format that this book provides. I keep my copy on a shelf next to a deck of cards and use it about once a month when I want to try something new. It serves its purpose. It is not the only reference you will ever need, but it is a solid starting point if you are moving beyond the basic three games most people know.
