Syed Arham November 05, 2023

Famous Solitaire Players and Their Secrets

Best Solitaire Players And Their Secret Tips

Any popular activity with a competitive aspect ends up creating champions who want to remain at the top of the food chain. These experts – through their incredible skill and experience playing the game – end up becoming legends of the game. Still, I was quite surprised to learn that even Solitaire has its catalog of famous players. Personally, I always perceived the game as a casual endeavor, and I never quite wrestled with the idea that this game might even have a ‘hall of fame’ per se.

It turns out that there were a few ambitious souls who absolutely dominated certain solitaire games in their respective eras. These players – aside from crushing my dreams of becoming a legend of Solitaire one day – managed to showcase a talent with the cards that few others could emulate. While I probably won’t be able to live up to their image, I’m hoping to give you folks a bit of an insight into their stories so maybe you can live up to their ranks.

Unlike most games, Solitaire doesn’t have a densely packed hall of fame. Rather, I’ve found a few names that only specialize in a particular aspect of the game. Now, you might be a little disappointed to hear that – most people love the idea that a game like Solitaire houses the names of people who dominated the game. Unfortunately, due to the random nature of the game, it’s very difficult to claim that a particular person was the ‘best’ at it.

Look at it this way: sometimes, the deck is just shuffled in a way that it’s easier to solve the game. If every game will have a random shuffle, how do you discern between the skills of two players? Hence, we have to resort to other aspects of the game – such as how fast a person is able to solve it and how many games they could win in succession.

Tscherni

When it comes to speed, this Solitaire legend hailing from Germany has no rival. Tscherni is a German Solitaire player who still holds the record for the fastest Solitaire game ever, where he completed a single round of Solitaire in just 5 seconds.

Now, while he did accomplish this feat in the slightly easier version of Solitaire (that being Klondike), you probably can’t come up with many examples of people who’d come close to that number still. Speed solitaire is a popular sport that ends up depending on both your skill as well your luck with a shuffle – I use the latter part to justify why I can’t beat Tschernis's record; the cards simply don’t shuffle in my favor!

Jokes aside, Tsherni has cemented his name in the history books until someone else beats this freakish feat.

Stories From The Underground

Some legends have cemented their name in the Hall of Fame, but some live even without a name. The reason for saying that is that I’ve come across multiple accounts of a man who’d managed to complete over 50,000 games with only 15% losses. Yet, when I tried to dig in and find his name, all I was able to find was something even more surprising: this was an elderly man at the age of 72!

This guy managed to achieve a 99.9% win percentage in the FreeCell variant. This feat involved playing an hour or two each day over four years. While most FreeCell games are solvable (compared to some Spider and Klondike games being unsolvable), winning 99.9% of them isn’t something anyone can do.

Famous Personalities You Probably Didn’t Know Played Solitaire

Similarly, you don’t have to be a champion of Solitaire to be known for playing it. Look at these two names – they’re known for something entirely unrelated, yet we still know from history that they enjoyed passing the time with Solitaire.

• Winston Churchill, the British statesman, was said to have greatly enjoyed playing Solitaire when he wasn’t tending to all his other responsibilities.
• Napoleon Bonaparte, the French leader, is also known to have played Solitaire in his spare time.

Not everyone can make it to the top – you’ll find that the best of the best isn’t just great because of a fluke: they all possess a set of skills that allows them to be there. If you want to know which skills to hone to be a great Solitaire player, here’s a quick rundown:

If you’ve ever thought of trying to take your Solitaire to the absolute best level or simply make a name for yourself through playing the game, you know who to look up to. However, even if you don’t, we can always treat Solitaire as the soothing game it is and find solace in that.