Winners for game #1994354560

Pat_E

The ten top players are all have a bird name, each game was played on 2012/02/04 between 7:25pm and 7:35pm, every game was won in 80-81 Moves, with Times of 18-23s :?: Something is wrong with this!

jim

Quite so. It seems that kingfisher playing under many other bird names has succeeded in filling up the leader board. An impressive prank! It's been going on for a week, but we hadn't noticed until this morning. We've discussed things we can do to mitigate it, but I suspect the birder will get bored before we get up the energy to implement them. We always knew it was possible, but we didn't expect anyone to take the time.

Props to kingfisher!
-Jim

Anonymous

Dear Jim,

Thank you for comments. I much apppreciate your humour and perhaps THE BEST SITE on the whole net for playing solitaire games. MANY MANY CONGRATULATIONS.
I do not want to be a spoilsport and push others off the LeaderBoard. That is not in the spirit of the game. Actually it is because this is such a WELL CONSTRUCTED programme and BEAUTIFULLY LAID OUT site, that it is possible to put in extraordinary performance times. Let me explain.
I started playing Freecell 50 years ago with an ordinary pack of cards !! The disadvantage is that it is difficult, almost impossible, to repeat the game (although sometimes I laid out 2 packs identically so I could replay). But I developed good strategies and visual memory. Microsoft brought Freecell to popular attention by including it in their installed game package. I started at game 1 and worked upwards. There were 3 games that were insolvable. But the MS programme is relatively unfriendly.
By comparison, your programme and layout is SUPERB:
1) The Undo and Redo buttons allow the player to analyse in detail every single move, to make small critical improvements in the game and time. I go backwards and forwards 10 times optimising play, not just for number of moves but for memory sequences and the flow movement of the mouse.
2) The keypad control (Ctrl-A) for AutoFinish speeds up play.
3) The well-chosen colours, easily read format, cardsize and layout of the board are BRILLIANT, and make for accuracy and the SHEER JOY of playing. (People had difficulties with the Valentine pinks).
4) I have picked up a few bugs. The measured speed is not always accurate according to a chronometer. And sometimes it is eroneously recorded, there are odd anomolies (I have a speed of 20s registered in one game which took over 1 min.)
In conclusion, it is a fine site and offers LOTS OF ENJOYMENT to players.
THANK YOU, kingfisher

david

First off, we are glad you like our site. Jim and I created and mainting Green Felt because we love solitaire. The things you listed are all things that we've paid special attention to and that we think make us stand out from the other countless solitaire sites and programs that exist. Knowing that other people appreciate that too makes us happy.

Our philosophy with the high scores is to have the elapsed time only be relevant for the first time you achieve a particular score. That lets you replay the game to get a higher score (presumably trying a different strategy) but not to just improve your time. Before we implemented that rule we found that when the leader board started filling up with faster and faster times, the solitaire games quickly turned from thinking/puzzle games into twitch/dexterity/memory games. Clearly some people enjoy that :-).

So our compromise for the people that love to do that kind of thing is to show all of your own scores in the game's high score table, but show other people just the first one (the leader board always just shows the first game at a particular score). That way you are free to improve your time and test your dexterity against yourself but it doesn't mess up the table for everyone who just wants to unwind from work and play the game of the day (once).

About the time bugs you mentioned:
One thing that can affect times is pausing the game. We subtract out the paused time from the overall elapsed time so you aren't penalized for answering the door or the phone or dealing with one of the other countless distractions that exist in life. Could the discrepancy you saw be related to that?

Computers are generally *very* accurate time keepers so it surprises me that it would be 40 seconds off. I would love more information so that we can try to fix that.

-David

By the way, I noticed these among your 40-odd user names:

tobeo rnott obeth isthe question? tisn obler mindtos uffe slings

Nicely done. :-)

Your newest one from today made me laugh too.

Anonymous

Games are instructive and constructive (and sometimes addictive) appealing to deep values within the player. There are key distinctions between individual and collective games, which rely on important (hidden) differences between Self-realisation Needs (realisation of one’s potential) and Esteem Needs (esteem of others).

Solitaire is an individual game, played by oneself, against oneself. The attraction of Solitaire has many factors: intellectual (the manipulation of complex patterns and sequences), emotional (the vertigo adrenaline of working against the clock), child values (pleasure, satisfaction at wining), coping with chance (random card deals), deep concentration (absorption in the game), etc. Adding a LeaderBoard and HighScores (not found on other sites) transforms Solitaire from an individual game towards a collective game. One is no longer playing against oneself but against a collective status, comparing one’s performance to other players. Thus one becomes dependent on the esteem of others.

1) A table for performance figures (score, time, accuracy and other parameters) of an individual single player enhances the feedback and value in Solitaire. It allows the person to improve the game (technique, moves) and enhances the self-realisation.
2) The LeaderBoard and HighScore tables incite players to submit their fastest time performances, in comparison with other players. This encourages them to “manipulate” the system (e.g. with 2 user names or practising without logging on, then closing the site and logging back on to post the best time).
3) The philosophy of “public disclosure of minimum time performance” further encourages such “manipulation practices.”
4) While LeaderBoard scores of the Game-of-the-Day disappear rapidly after a few days, the low numbered games, 1 to 100, remain readily visible. This further encourages players to “dose their performances” like doping in the Tour de France. Perhaps an alternative philosophy could be employed, eg. erasing the HighScores after 1-2 weeks to allow new names?

I found these anomalies:
1) The same user names occur multiple times for the same score in many records (e.g. Seahaven game 3 & 4, Freecell game 19).
2) Times are not always recorded accurately (Freecell game 20, Gannet took 1m20s, but it is recorded as 20s. Also Gannet should NOT be in the top ten according to the minimum performance rule).
3) Freecell game 2 has a curious time in first place.

Let me apologise for multiple user names and trying to test the system to its limits. I have been enjoying these games with REAL FUN, thanks to your EXCELLENT site. Well done!

kingfisher.