Is chance a real factor in solitaire computer card games or is it preprogrammed?”
I know from talking to some computer programmers that true random numbers or cards are hard to generate in programming. This means there is probably some element of programming involved. I doubt they actually rig the games to be easier or more difficult as they have nothing to gain from doing so. You are not playing for money, and the scores aren’t even kept after you close the program. I’d suggest that if you played long enough and kept accurate records you’d probably find its pretty random. The human mind also plays a factor here. If you noticed a particular combination at one point, and focused on it a bit, then similar combinations are going to jump out at you in the future, while your mind will disregard and forget all the times that you didn’t see a similar combination. This makes it seem that something sometimes happens more often than it actually does.
The computer randomly “shuffles” the cards before “dealing” them out. It makes use of the computer’s random number generator. Programmers on the whole (and I am one) are pretty lazy. They wouldn’t want to spend weeks or months “pre-programming” sets of cards in to the game. In the case of Microsoft Freecell, and some other games, each “Shuffle” has what’s called a hash assigned to it that gives the computer all the information about which “shuffle” was used for that game, so you can go back later and play the same game again. My grandpa played several games of solitaire a day on his computer for years. One day, when I was over visiting, he showed me this. I didn’t doctor the image. That’s really what was on his screen. So maybe your guess is as good as mine :-).
