What is a good 'Baker's Dozen' solitaire strategy?

Question

I am wondering what a good strategy is to win the 'Baker's Dozen' solitaire variant? So far, I have tried to keep the cards descending in the same suit, wherever possible, but when the Kings are at the top of the tableau pile, it makes it very difficult.

Answer 1

OK, so I finally figured it out and for the record, here is what I found works well.

If you can stack cards descending by suit, do that but if it isn't possible and you have to stack on a different suit, make sure that there aren't any cards of the same suit that are of a LOWER value beneath them. That way you can ensure you aren't locking up that suit in that tableau pile. That worked for me! Also, don't forget that you can put an Ace on top of a 2 if you need to pull a King from another tableau pile.

Answer 2

I play this game all the time and it's often winnable but sometimes it takes a lot of undos to get there (my winning percentage is about 47% over 300+ games). I find that if I can empty a stack early, my chances are better. Also, because you stack cards onto the same suit, there's no harm in having one suit get way "ahead" of the others. In fact, it may help to focus on one suit at a time. Of course, you have to be prepared to switch focus to a different suit if the opportunity comes up.

Answer 3

baker's dozen has a number of variants. the one i play most has all cards face up and kings placed at top of stack. this variant can be won almost all the time (99.5 to 99.9%).

the strategy i use is to: 1) put all the aces and deuces up on their appropriate pile, and some of the higher cards if not needed later; 2) try to find the best king(s) to uncover and look for queens that trap a card in between to start the build; 3) when building a stack the primary task is to bring a card that can potentially trap cards above it, and only secondarily to match suits. this means that sometimes a lot of rearranging will happen later in the game to get the suits matched. 4) when reducing a stack it's best to uncover the higher valued top cards and not to build on the suit piles; 5)when building a stack, look for potential blocks to remove.