How good am I?
jasonj
REGISTERED
I am new to this competitive solitaire thing; been doing it for a few months. I think my game is good based on these simple criteria:
I regularly finish in the top ten percent of players, often higher.
I occasionally rank first or near (at least for a while) even in games in which a few thousand participate.
It is not uncommon for me to win five or six games consecutively.
Here's the thing, I have no idea if this makes me an allstar or an average player.
Appreciate any feedback.
Comments
I don't know. I'm about the same but I don't know how good that makes us. I like seeing my name on the top ten and I look to see who else is there. Will watch for you.
A definition of solitaire
c.1500, "widow;" 1716, "solitary person, recluse," from French solitaire, from Latin adjective solitarius "alone, lonely, isolated" (see solitary). Sense of "a precious stone set by itself" is from 1727. Meaning "card game played by one person" is first attested 1746.
As its one person against one game what are the benefits of
Being allstar
Being average?
Approbation of others of course but is that - from unknown/unseen strangers - really that important?
Enjoy
If you finish in the top 10% that means you have beaten 90% of the players...that is not average. I gave up worrying about time and I now concentrate on the score. At my age I need to concentrate on on the logic, reasoning and being able to find the solution regardless of time. I do however try to land in the top 10% on the average difficulty games and the top 25% of the games of the day. If I accomplish this then I am satisfied.
JMO but I think it sounds as if you are pretty good at the games.
You cannot draw much in the way of conclusions based only on the “You placed Xth out of Y” info because “Y” includes incomplete games. So if a significant number of players take several tries before the finish a game, then Y will be deceptive.
Case in point: here’s what GreenFelt reported when I quit today’s Game of the Day with with a few cards left to play:
So if you finished the game at 340th, you would be in the top 1% of all games played, but you’d fall to top 17% of games completed.
It can work the other way, too. If a significant number players replay a game multiple times, recording faster times than you, then your rank is artificially deflated. For the game of the day, I might complete the game more than a hundred times with scores under 20 seconds as I strive to whittle my time down by another second. Just for the sake of discussion, say you best score is ranked 100 out of whatever, but the top 99 scores were all logged by the same obsessively determined player. I’d say you’re really the second fastest player. Alas, GF gives no visibility to this side of the equation.
Jasonj, I can only speak for FreeCell. The game itself gives you all the feedback you need to put a number (rank) on how good you are. I am assuming by "good", you mean how fast one plays and NOT how few "moves" one requires to finish the game. Glad you like simple criteria. There's 2 kind of competitors; tappers and clickers. Tappers use a touch screen (like an iPad) and clickers use a touch pad or mouse. Here are a few rules-of-thumb and a little math to help you determine whether you think you're "good". Figure on the good tapper to be a little better than twice as fast as the good clicker. The first order of business is to boil the game down to the fewest possible number of taps (or clicks) using super moves and the auto-finish feature. Once you have settled on the tap (or click) sequence for a particular game, reiterate that sequence until you can achieve a click-per-second rate. If you can get most games you attempt down to 20-or-fewer clicks, and then achieve a second-per-click rate, you're "good". Multiply the number of seconds you can achieve for a given game as a clicker by 40% and that number is what you should be able to achieve on the same game (using the same sequence) as a tapper. Don't get hung up on how many "moves" are required. The key is the fewest number of taps (or clicks). E.g., let's say you're able to solve FreeCell Game #1345014679 in 14 clicks. With a few reps you should be able to get your time down to 14 (maybe 13) seconds. That's "good". A "good" touch screen player should be able to execute that exact same click sequence using taps and finish in 6 seconds (40% X 14). Anything faster than that, steroids are probably involved, lol. So, are you good?
All very helpful. Thanks