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NOT ONLINE Sholly73

Sholly73 has been a member since 11/9/05 and was last logged in on 10/2/18

SHOLLY'S TIP SHEETS, CHAPTER VI: 5 Card Solitaire 9/5/07 10:33 PM

5 Card Solitaire, formerly known as Poker Solitaire, is another King.com original, if I'm not mistaken. From what I understand, the name was changed due to anti-poker legislation passed by the US Congress last year. Even though this game is pure skill, it's understandable that King wouldn't want a bunch of busybody lawmakers to confuse this game with actual poker. Do you get the impression that I disagree with the legislation? 'Cause I do, ya know...

Anyway, the objective of this game is to make your way through three rounds by forming up to ten poker hands, trying to meet all the requirements for the round in order to advance. It's another "think before you click" game, but you don't have much time to dawdle. Making it to Round 3 will get you an achievement point.

Let's talk about the nuts and bolts of this game:

You have two minutes and ten hands in each round. You will be given a list of 5-8 Required Hands, which must all be made in order to advance. Note that you do NOT have to make the full complement of ten hands to advance to the next round, as long as you complete the Required list.

Click on a card to select it, then click on any card touching that card to add it to the hand. Once you've clicked five touching cards, if you've formed at least a pair, you'll hear the click of your six-shooter as your hand is ready to "fire", or submit. Unlike Honey Combo and Hex Combo, you don't have to click cards in sequence--as long as each card you click touches one you've selected, it can be added to the hand.

The game continues until you either: Complete three rounds; Run out of time or hands without completing all Required Hands for that round; or Allow a Bomb Card to explode. As you get bonus points for each round you complete, it's obviously in your best interest to make it through all three rounds.

There are three kinds of special cards that will affect game play. Let's talk about them a bit:

Gold Cards start to appear in Round 2. You'll almost always see at least one Gold Card in both Rounds 2 and 3. Using a Gold Card in a hand will give you half again the score for that hand--in other words, your hand score will be multiplied by 1½. If you use more than one Gold Card in a hand, your hand score will be multiplied for each Gold Card used. For instance, two Gold Cards would cause your hand to be multiplied by 1½x1½=2¼. Given the choice, you should use Gold Cards together rather than separately. More on that in a bit.

Bomb Cards appear in Round 3, and sometimes in Round 2. A Bomb Card will have a bomb pictured on it (duh) with a 3 hand timer. If you don't use a Bomb Card in the next three hands, it will explode and end your game immediately. NOTE: If a Bomb Card appears with only one or two hands left to make, you can safely ignore it, but if it appears with exactly 3 hands left, you still have to use it! It will still explode in that case, even though your last hand is submitted before the bomb counter changes.

Freeze Cards only appear in Round 3, and they're very annoying. A Freeze Card will have a picture of a snowflake on it; if you don't use it in your next hand, it will freeze and become unusable. A Freeze Card can be thawed out by using a card next to it, but it will still have the snowflake on it, and as such will freeze again if not used in the very next hand.

Let's talk about the scoring for this game:

Each hand you make is worth a given number of points, and the more difficult a hand is to make, the more it's worth:
One Pair: 50
Two Pair: 100
Three of a Kind: 120
Straight: 130
Flush: 150
Full House: 175
Four of a Kind: 250
Straight Flush: 400
Royal Flush: 500
Five of a Kind: 600
If a hand satisfies one of your Required Hands, 200 points are added to the above score (before multiplying, in the case of a Gold Card).
As mentioned above, your hand score will be multiplied by 1.5 for each Gold Card that appears in it.
Completing a round will get you bonus points: 500 for Round 1, 1000 for Round 2, and 1500 for Round 3.
You also get a Speed Bonus of one point for each second less than 15 it takes you to make your next hand, but this doesn't affect score or strategy much.

Let's talk about how to score big in this game:

The key is to make big hands, and use Gold Cards in Required Hands and other big hands whenever possible. Remember, the 200 point bonus for a Required Hand is added BEFORE the hand is multiplied for Gold Cards.

Note also that a bigger hand can complete a Required Hand if it fits the requirement. For instance, a Two Pair requirement can be satisfied with Two Pair, Full House, Four of a Kind, or Five of a Kind. It's strongly recommended that you do this whenever possible.

If you have the chance to use more than one Gold Card in a hand, it's usually a good idea to use them together, as long as you don't have to make a substantially weaker hand to get them both in. For instance, if you need 2 Two Pair hands and you have two Gold Cards handy that can be either combined or split, the difference in score looks like this:
With the Gold Cards taken together, the two hands are worth 300 (100 base + 200 Required) and 675 (300x1.5x1.5), for a total of 975.
With the Gold Cards taken separately, both hands are worth 450 (300x1.5), for a total of 900.
However, if you have to make a considerably weaker hand to bring the Gold Cards together, it might not be worth it. For our example, if you can only make One Pair by bringing the Gold Cards together, the hands in that case would only be worth 300 (for the plain one) and 113 (50x1.5x1.5), which is much less than if you took them separately and made Two Pair with each one.

Watch for the big hands! If you see three or four cards coming together that will make a Straight Flush, Royal Flush, or Five of a Kind, try to make hands that will bring those cards together, and hopefully, you'll get a Joker or the card(s) you need. This means that you may have to settle for a low-scoring hand or two, but the payoff is often worth it, especially if your big hand is Required and/or uses a Gold Card.

Good scoring benchmarks to aim for are 3500 points for Round 1 (after bonus), and 8000 for Round 2. I usually get in the 12.5K to 13.5K range, though my high score is about 14.1K.

That's about all that comes to mind for now. If I think of more, I'll add to it. If you're still in the Royal Cup (which I'm not), I hope this helps. Take care and good luck!

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