The Index lists all Rangoon Help topics.

Rangoon the game of solitaire
-Introduction
-Rules of the Game
-Strategy and Hints

Rangoon on your browser
-Playing the Game
-Button Panel
-Keyboard Usage
-Menu commands
-Automatic Play

Administration
-Play Mode
-Game options and playing preferences
-Game Score
-Game Statistics
-Tournament Play

Interfaces
-Command-line
-Profile
-Options

Introduction

Rangoon is a solitaire card game played with 52 cards. One of its charmes is that is played with all the cards face-up. After shuffling the deck, the cards will be laid down face-up in four horizontal rows of thirteen cards each, and an empty spot in front. The goal is to rearrange the cards by using the gaps, such that each row contains one complete family.

The rules are interpreted in numereous ways. Likewise the game is known under a number of names, like "Gaps", "Montana (Aces)", "Spaces (and Aces)", "Station", "BlueMoon", "(Free) Parking. For each of these games the sections below will give the typical -or else, usual- rules, though in practice even rules and names are blended.
A number of the rules is implemented in the game supported by this website.

The description is the result of the little information I have gathered over a period of years, and is bound to be incomplete. Therefore remarks or enhancements on the above are greatly appreciated, and can be send to rudy@mulhome.nl

The Initial Tableau

After thoroughly shuffling the deck the cards are laid down face-up, without overlapping in four rows of thirteen cards each, while leaving an empty spot in front of each row.

Ranking of the cards

The completed family may either be ordered top down, or bottom up. As for most solitaires the ace usually is treated as a "1"; the usual top-down ranking is K-Q-J-10...3-2-A, and the bottom-up ranking A-2-3...10-J-Q-K. The ranking schemes A-K-Q-J...4-3-2 and 2-3-4...J-Q-K-A are less common.

Moving a card

A card can be moved to a gap, provided the card is of the same suit and one lower rank than the card in front of the gap. So the eight of can be moved to the gap behind the nine of . By moving a card to a gap a new gap is created, at the position which was occupied by the just moved card. That gap can be used to move another card, and so on.
A king, being the card with the highest rank, can only be moved to a gap in front of a row. However, once a king is located in front of a row it can not be moved anymore.
The game is ceased as soon as no more moves are possible, because all four gaps are behind an ace, or behind another gap.

Game Over / Reshuffle

When the game is ceased (no more moves are possible, because all four gaps are behind an ace, or behind another gap) the unordered cards are dealt again. Usually the game is over when it is ceased for the third time, or when the hand is won by completing all families.
In some variants however there is just one deal allowed.

For the game in it's most difficult form (no extra deals allowed) one needs both skill and luck to win a hand. You may consider yourself a skilled player when you are successful in one out of hundred games. Though the two extra deals do not make the game that much easier, the odds to win a hand are much better. For an experienced player the chance to win a hand are over 25 %. Though the differences are marginal, the odds to win are the best for Gaps and the worst for Rangoon.

Strategy and Hints

When you have played a few games you may agree that the game looks simple, but it is not at all that easy. Some simple guide-lines may be of help:

Strategy and Hints: concealing

The number of possible moves is reduced as soon as a gap behind an ace pops up. This could be avoided by moving the ace at the back of a row, where it can not do any harm.

Such an ace is put aside nicely; analogously a 'two' on the last-but-one location is in a harmless position. An ace can only be legally put aside at the back of a row by moving it behind the 'two' in the last-but-one location. If possible one ought to postpone the moving of such a harmless two until the ace is put behind it.

The same reasoning applies for a three (on the last-but-two location), the four, the five and so on. One must try to postpone the moving of such a card until the successor is put behind it. Therefore it is recommended to look at the start of game, if there are any cards on a favourable position, and to account for it in your strategy.

Strategy and Hints: blockade

Besides ace-holes another threat to complete the game exists: the blockade. A straight-forward blockade is easy to detect, but the more complex ones are not.

A simple blockade:
-K -Q -10 ...... ...... -J

a mutual blockade:
-K -Q -J -Q ...... ......
-K -10 ...... ...... ...... ......

a complex blockade:
-K ...... ...... ...... ...... -Q
-K -J ...... ...... ...... ......
-K -Q -J -Q ...... ......
-K -10 ...... ...... ...... ......

In the first example the blockade might have originated from the situation:
-K -J <gap> ...... -Q <gap>
by moving subsequently -10, -J and -Q.
The blockade could have been prevented by first moving the -J !!

A potential single blockade (the most common form of blockade) can be detected by the fact that a card resides in the row of the king with the same suit, and is located such that not all its predecessor can be fitted between that card and the king.
In the row below the -8 is a potential blockade, the -10 is not:
-K -10 -8 -4 -10 ......

Strategy and Hints: don't delay

If the moving of a card does not influence the course of the game, then perform that move right away, even if it would cause a gap behind an ace !! It just benefits to the overview, and in case of the ace-hole your attention is put once more to the threat. The next situation gives an example:
-K <gap> ...... -Q -10 ....
-K <gap> -J ...... ...... -Q
-K <gap> ...... -Q ...... ......
-K <gap> ...... -Q -J ......

The -Q can be moved without having any influence on the course of the game (there is no room to put -J). The same applies for -Q (because -J is already located behind it). The moving of -Q does influence the course of the game obviously (the possibility of moving -J has been changed).
But beware, the moving of -Q might give another direction to the game, although one would not assume that one first sight.

Playing on the Computer

Nowadays playing solitaire on the computer has probably overtaken the play with a real deck of cards. Using playing-cards certainly has its nostalgic appeal, but the support of a software-program gives some interesting extra's, such as undoing moves, keep track of your score, or replay a certain game.

The software behind this webpage enables you to play the solitaire Rangoon (or another member of its family), choose the rules that you are familiair with, keep track of your score, ...

This is the third version of the program Rangoon. Back in 1986 I wrote a program (in basic and assembler) on my DAI-computer, one of the -for that time- sophisticated home computers felling into oblivion once the personal computer started its unstoppable advance. In 1992 I ported the program to Visual Basic which made it available to the large 'customer base' of windows-users. In 2009 I picked it up again and did another port, now to javascript, making it available as a web-page. I succeeded in producing a running alpha-test version on Internet Explorer 7, but the attempt to make it cross-browser (FireFox, Chrome) stranded in problems. And most of them were in the area in which the browser-world was changing (better standardisation towards HTML-5 and security). In 2014, when things seem to have settled down a bit, I made a second attempt.

Starting the game

Before you can start to play, you will first have to define the rules according which you will play. But if you only want to frolic around a bit to become acquainted with the game you can simply follow one of the links below:
- Try out Rangoon
- Try out Montana Aces
- Try out Gaps
- Try out Station
note: a pro of the frolic-mode that you can easily change rules and other preferences, the con is that no information is saved between sessions.

When you want to preserve your personal settings between sessions you will have to define an ID under which the information is saved. When starting the webpage for the first time (outside the 'frolic'-mode) and without any parameters the program will automaticly switch to the options-screen in which you can assign the game-rules and playing-preferences. After applying the choosen settings you can start to play the solitaire.

To start one of the standard games use one of the links below:
- Start Rangoon
- Start Montana Aces
- Start Gaps
- Start Station

Playing the game

To start the Next Game:
To start a Selected Game:
To Deal Again:
To Move a Card:
To Move a King:
To Back Up a Move:
To Back Up a Series of automatic moves:
To Save a position
To Restart from a saved position
To exit the game:
When the -banner appears no more moves are possible. You will then have the following options:

Automatic play

When there is only one possible move, you can choose the automatic play. The program keeps on moving until the game is ceased (no more moves possible), or until the number of possible moves becomes more then one, so you can take over again.

Though automatic play is originally designed to take over the burden of going the complete chain of predestined moves involving one gap, the program can be instructed to offer the function also when there is more than one possible move (see AutoEnable option). Choosing automatic play when there is more than one possible move will keep on moving until the game is ceased, or until the number of possible moves becomes more than the current number of possible moves.

Use of Automatic will speed up the game, when you have concluded that no matter what moves are made, the ultimate result will be the same. But take care, automatic play when you have more than one possibility to move is not using an optimal strategy and might produce an undesired result. Even when you think that it does not matter in which order the moves are made, it still may happen that an alternative strategy with unexpected result pops up, for worse (!) or for better (?). It certainly baffled me more than once.

Starting automatic play at level "always" with four moves possible will only be stopped when no more moves are possible !!
During automatic play the >-button is shown pushed.

To Start Automatic Play:
To Stop Automatic Play:

Repetitive move

Becomes handy when doing a sequence of moves involving the same gap, and can be considered as a dedicated automatic move. The program keeps on moving until the gap is after an ace, or after another gap.

To Start Repetitive Move:
To Stop Repetitive Move:

Completion move

Becomes handy when doing a sequence of moves to put a number of cards on the final target position. The program keeps on moving until no more "final-target-move" can be made for the involved suit.

To Start Completion Move:
To Stop Completion Move:

Button Panel

The Button Panel groups all playing controls at the bottom at the screen, so you don't need to chase the mouse all over the screen.

The exit-game button is only enabled at the end the game, and can be used to stop playing.

The nth-deal button is only enabled when the player is allowed to deal (again), in its disabled state it can be examined by the player to check out how many deals have been done yet.

The start-game button is shared with the deal button and is only available when the automatic start option is disabled at the start of the session. It can be used to start up the (next) game.

The next-game button is shared with the deal button and is only enabled at the end of the game. It can be used to start up the next game.

The < button can be used to undo the previous move-action, which is either one single move, a complete sequence of automatic moves, or a secondary deal; even at the end of a game the undo button is enabled.

The > button can be used to redo the previous undo of a single move; when there is no undo it will perform the automatic move, see also Automatic play.

The |< button can be used to go back to the start of the deal.

The >| button can be used to go to the end of the deal.

The << button can be used to play backward.

The >> button can be used to play forward.

The four number buttons can be used to move a card to a gap, and are especially useful when doing a number of moves involving the same gap. They also show which gaps can be filled, and which cannot because they are behind an ace or behind another gap.

Please take notice of the fact that usage of the button panel will allow you play faster, but also diverts your attention from the cards towards the buttons !!

The Move Counter shows the number of moves completed.

Keyboard Usage

This section gives a summary of the keys which can be used:

1..4	move card to gap 1..4
Bkspc	undo one move
Enter	start game / deal cards
←	single step backward
→	single step foreward
PgDn	backward to begin of deal
PgUp	foreward to end of deal
Home	rewind
End	flush / automatic move
Esc	stop multi move / flush / rewind
F5	save a position for rollback
F6	rollback to a saved position
F7	view / change options
F8	get history

By toggling the numeric keys with your left hand (and provided you've still got four fingers) and using the right hand to press the enter key, you can play the game at real turbo speed and -more important- you can totally focus on the cards.

Game Score

The game-score of Rangoon is based upon the following components:

Position score

One point for each card moved to the final position, while all cards before that card are also on the final position (e.g. -jack is the third card in the row headed by -king, and is preceded by -queen).
Dependant on the game-type a king is counted in the position score (for Rangoon the king is excluded for the position-score, for Montana Aces the king is included).

The sequence score

One point for each card positioned behind its predecessor. Dependant on the game-type a king is considered to be ranked when it is located at the head of a row

The row bonus score

One point for each completed family.

The calculation of the game-score can be adjusted (see Options), the default method is targeted at a 100 point score for a successfull completed game.

The current score is displayed in the title-line.

A list of scores can be attached to the gameset, and can be viewed in the history.

History

The statistics of a gameset and history of all played games is attached to the PlayID. You can look up the scores of the played games by choosing History from the Admin menu (or by pressing F8).

The history frame shows on the left the overall statistics, with:
and on the right a scrollable list of statistics of the specific games, with:

The selected game can be replayed by pushing the replay button.

Gaps may appear in the list. This means that you have not played the games sequentially, but explicitly choose to play one or more games which were not adjacent to the current played range of games. The gap will be filled in time, because the program by itself will always choose the first unplayed game.

= = UNDER CONSTRUCTION = =

Tournament play

The program does not feature tournament-play, it merely offers some basic tools to play or to moderate a tournament. The organisation of a tournament is still in the hands of human: a number of people forming the Tournament Committee (T.C.) has to define the gameset, will announce the tournament, collect the scores of the participants and publish the final result.

To give equal changes to everybody a set of games is defined by:
(note that other play-options (e.g. ranking or suitseq) do not influence the course of the game, and can be chosen freely by the participants).
The T.C. will much likely also define a closing date and the method to collect the scores of the participants (e.g. by eMail), and announce all the above Rules-of-the-Tournament (e.g. by a note on a BBS).

The participants will play the games (according the announced rules) and send their results to the T.C. The T.C. will collect the scores of the participants, and publish the result (e.g. as follow-up note on a BBS).

To participate a player has to create (see command[Admin]-[Create]) a new set with the proper attributes (PlayID, NrGames, NrDeal and TournamentPlay). After playing all games the Tournament score must be exported to an text-file by using the [Admin]-[Export] command. Subsequently that file can be delivered to the T.C.

To moderate a tournament the T.C. will have to create (see command[Admin]-[Create]) a special tournament-set with the proper attributes (PlayID, NrGames, NrDeal and TourModerate). The program offers two extra commands for a "moderated" PlayID:
[Admin]-[Import] to perform a basic validation on a delivered export-file, and to append the scores to a result-file.
[Admin]-[Verify] to perform an extensive validation on a delivered export file, by replaying the games one by one.

Menu Commands

A number of functions supported by the program is accessable by means of the menu-bar located just below the title-caption. By clicking one of the main items on the menubar a menu-frame will drop down from which one can select a menu item.

Items on the menu-bar:

Game Menu Commands

The game-menu gathers the functions on game level (start game, replay game, ..., exit).

Next Game

Starts the next game.

Start Game nr ...

You are prompted for the number of the game to be started.

Replay Game

The current game is replayed from scratch, you can break the replay at any moment and take over manually.

Exit

Exits Rangoon
If you wish to exit in the middle of a game the program will ask you if you want to save the game in order to be continued at another time.

Move Menu Commands

The move-menu gathers the functions to be used within a game, with the emphasis on the functions allowing you to restart the game at a specific point.

Deal cards

Deals again all unranked cards.

Back till deal

Backs up to the previous deal.

Snapshot

To save a position for rollback. Note that a rollback position is lost as soon as you backtrack past that point.

Rollback

To restart at the position saved by Snapshot.

Admin Menu Commands

The Admin-menu gathers the functions available on a gameset, for handling the game-attributes and play-preferences, getting the statistics.

Create

To create a new gameset. You may want a new set, because:

Select

To make another gameset current.
However, the recommended way to distinguish between the available sets is by using a separate bookmark for each set, and specifying the playid in the URL and in the bookmarks name.

Delete

To remove a gameset. You will be prompted if you really meant to remove the concerned playid before any removal is done. Upon an affirmative response all information of the gameset is removed.
??? Finally the current playid is set to the standard playid "RANGOON".

Options

To show / update the options.

History

To show the history.

Help Menu Commands

The help-menu gathers the functions providing information.

Help

Gives you the help you are reading now (starting at the index).

Keyboard

Gives you the help about the keyboard-usage.

Menu

Gives you the help about the command-menu

About

Gives the header of the information-file (raninfo.txt) supplied with the package.

URL

When starting a webpage you can pass information to it by means of the URL. You can specify a gameset by adding a question-mark ("?") and an "I" followed by the ID of the gameset (see PlayID).

If the gameset is unknown yet, the program accepts five more arguments in arbitrary order to pre-set the basic game-attributes: If the play-identification is already known, the given parameters are ignored.

The URL /www.mulhome.nl/rangoon/rangoon?IJOHN_APRIL1+G2+PAPRIL1+D1+N101+R0x775443 defines a montana-aces tournament set of 101 games with single deal-option and the identification JOHN_APRIL1.

The command-line can be specified from inside windows by using the program manager when creating a new program-item, or updating the properties of an existing item.

Storage

Your personal context of the game is kept locally (on your computer), and consist of the playid of your current gameset (named RAN_@playid) and a number of gamesets (named RAN_playid-name). Rangoon uses domstorage, which is supported by most of the current generation of browsers (Chrome 4, Firefox 3.5, InternetExplorer 9.0).

If domstorage is not supported rangoon will use cookies with an expiry-time of 1 year. However, cookies offer a very limited space of storage, which is only sufficient when no data about the games is being saved.

A disadvantage of storage in cookies or webstorage is that you can not retrieve it easily. You need knowledge of the browser and operating system to get hold of the data. To overcome this problem an export functionality is available by the [Admin]...[Export] commands.
How the export is done depends on the browser. A straight export to file is only available in Internet Explorer 10 (and up). Export by email is available on all major browsers, but is done on the serverside (using the email function on the client has its restrictions on the size of the exported data). As a last resort (e.g. when you don't want to pass your email-address to the server for privacy-reasons) the export can be done manually by copy and paste.

Storage to file is also possible if Rangoon is played on a browser that supports direct file-access by means of the ActiveX FileSystemObject (e.g. Internet Explorer). It was used originally for the purpose of developping and testing the website.
Though letting a webpage access your local file-system is considered dangereous, you still may decide not to keep the gameset-data in storage supplied by the browser but to store it in a file. You can activate/deactivate it by the [Admin]...[Change Folder] command. The ActiveX FileSytemObject is not marked as a safe ActiveX object and so is disabled in the standard settings. Do not ever enable it (you allow any website to read and write on your disc !!), but let the browser prompt you for permission at invocation of a website. Disadvantage is that the prompt will show up for every website that examines the availability of the FileSystemObject. You can avoid that by adding "www.mulhome.nl" to your list of trusted websites (for which the prompting is already a standard setting).

Note: the items RAN_@playid and RAN_@folder are always kept in the browser-storage.

Options

STILL UNDER CONSTRUCTION

When activated the window shows the game-attributes and playing-preferences which can be updated. The game-attributes are related to a gameset, and must be known before any game in that set can be played. Most game-attributes (like the PlayID and NrDeal) can only be updated if no game in that set has been played yet. The play-preferences only effect the look and feel of the program, not the game itself (e.g. the background color of the tableau).

The maintenance of the options will be activated (1) explicitly by one of the [Admin] commands, or (2) implicitly by starting the program with a fresh PlayID.

When you are satisfied with the selection as given you can close the options-frame by pressing the Close-button. When you are satisfied with the made changes press the Apply-button, when you decide to leave things as they were, you can return by clicking the Reset-button.

The applied changes will be stored in the storage automaticly.

Game attributes:
Play preferences:
Other:

Play-identification

The PlayID identifies a gameset, and is its most prominent game-attribute. It consists of 5 up to 16 alphanumeric characters (a..z,0..9), and is used as an identification under which the information about the gameset is preserved between sessions. For the special PlayID frolic though no information is preserved; it is intended to frolic around a bit to become acquainted with the game.
When started, the Program of Rangoon accepts the PlayID as a URL-parameter under the flag I. If not specified the PlayID is fetched from the storage-item PlayID. If not specified in the profile either, the empty PlayID is used and the command [Admin]-[Select] is invoked.


Profile-topic: playid
Cookie: playid
URL-flag: I

Shuffle Key

The shuffle-key is used to determine the starting layout of the tableau for each game. The goal is that - indifferent of the type of computer and browser - everybody using the same shuffle-key will play exactly the same games. The shuffle-key consists of 5 up to 13 alphanumeric characters (a..z,0..9); by default the key basic is used.

Profile-topic: shufflekey
URL-flag: K

Game Type

The game-type defines which type of game is to be played, four types are defined: 1 (Rangoon), 2 (Montana Aces), 3 (Gaps) and 4 (Station). Game-type 0 means undefined. Setting the game-type to a value other than 0 will influence the setting of the rules-topics:

gametype	gaprule	rowrule	lockrule
1 / Rangoon	rank	suit	auto
2 / Montana	ace	free	pick
3 / Gaps	front	free	move
4 / Station	tail	place	pick

The current value is shown under the header GameType, you can select another value by clicking the down-arrow. Other game-attributes will be adapted automaticly according the choosen game-type.

Profile-topic: gametype
URL-flag: G

Number of Deals

Specifies the number of deals available to complete a game.

Profile-topic: maxdeal
URL-flag: D

Number of Games

Specifies the number of games related to the PlayID

Profile-topic: maxgame
URL-flag: N

Rules

Specifies which rules to follow.

Profile-topic: rules
Option-fields: gap-location, suit-location, king-locking, auxiliaries, misc and score

Score Method

Specifies the method to calculate the game-score.

Profile-topic (container): rules

Ranking

The completed family may either be ordered top down, or bottom up. As for most solitaires the ace usually is treated as a "1"; the usual top-down ranking is [ King-Queen-Jack-10-9-...3-2-Ace ], the usual bottom-up ranking is [ Ace-2-3-...9-10-Jack-Queen-King ].
Two other ranking schemes [ Ace-King-Queen-Jack-10-...-4-3-2 ] and [ 2-3-4-...-10-Jack-Queen-King-Ace ] are less usual.
In Montana Aces the aces are not part of the completed family. The bottom-up ranking [ 2-3-4...10-Jack-Queen-King ] is more often used as the top-down ranking [ King-Queen-Jack-10...4-3-2 ].

You can select your favourite ranking by clicking the down-arrow under the header [- card-sequence --], and choosing the wanted item.

Profile-topic: cardseq

Suitseq

The standard sequence of the suits within Rangoon is: -- -. All other suit-sequences are available by means of the suitseq-option. It is preserved as a 4-digit string where each digit corresponds with the number of a suit in the sequence; the standard value is "0123", the value "1230" denotes [ -- - ]
You can change the suit-sequence by clicking the -switches under the header suit-sequence.

Profile-topic: suitseq

Move-animation

When move-animation is inactive, the card is teleported; rather than moved. When move-animation is active, the move of a card will be animated; the speed of the move is determined by the MoveDelay.

AnimateRate

The AnimateRate determines the speed of an animated move. It expresses the number of frames in the movie of the average move, and is tuned from the MoveDelay. Changing the value of this item is not advised; the program just uses it as a start-value, when tuning the actual frame-rate at runtime (according the value of the MoveDelay).

Manual Drag

When the manual drag option is active, you are able to drag a card manually, and drop it on a gap (or the card before the gap).
The option is shown under the header Miscellaneous. Clicking it will activate / deactivate the option.

AutoDelay, DealDelay and MoveDelay

These options specify the amount of time the program will delay before issuing the next action. The delay-times are specified in 1/100 seconds. The delay-times can vary from 0 to 2 seconds, and can be altered by using the horizontal scroll bars; the chosen delay-time is shown in the box behind the scroll-bar.
Pick specifies the time between picking up two cards.
Deal specifies the time between dealing two cards.
Turn specifies the time between turning two cards.
Deal specifies the time between dealing two cards.
Auto specifies the time between two subsequent automatic moves.
Move defines the average time of an animated move. Using a delayauto of zero will result in .....

Folder

?????? The Rangoon directory is used to gather the administration for the program. By default the program uses the working directory (for MS/Windows 3.0 this is the directory where the .EXE file is located, for MS/Windows 3.1 it is the Working Directory related with the program).

SavedGame

If you did exit in the middle of a game, the program will save the progress, so you are able to continue the interrupted game at another time.

CardDeck

The images of the cards and the cardbacks used by rangoon are kept in a seperate folder in the website. Rangoon comes with four decks for the standard monitors: deck41x55 for the standard VGA (640x480), deck41x55a for the standard VGA (640x480) with oversized card-indices, deck51x69 for a 800x600 screen, and deck61x85 for a 1024x756 screen.

CardBack

When dealing the cards, Rangoon will first put out the cards face down, so the card-back is shown. You may select the card-back to be used; Rangoon can also be instructed to show a card face up right away.

You can select your own favourite cardback by clicking it (the favourite card-back (if any) is highlighted, all other cards are shaded). You can instruct Rangoon to choose one randomly by clicking the box labelled "random" (all card-backs are lightly shaded), or you can instruct Rangoon to show the cards faced up right away by clicking the box labelled "none" (all card-backs are shaded).

The cardback shown during dealing the cards. By default the program chooses a cardback randomly (value 0). The values 1..8 correspond with a specific card-back, all other values will instruct the program to show the cards faced up right away.

Card Indices

The indeces in the corner of each card shows a variation from country to country. The program enables you to change the indices when you are not accustomed to use the standard Anglo-American ones on the card-faces of the kings, queens, jacks and aces. Though mixing the Anglo-American patterns with continental lettering is improper from a historic point of view, you may prefer it to the given standard. The current selection is shown by the text as well as by the set of four cards under the header [- CardIndices --]. You can select another set of indices, by clicking the down-arrow and the desired item. The four cards will still show the pattern based on the Anglo-American deck, but with the choosen card-indices. When the requested card-indices are not supported in the list, you can choose your own set of indices by means of a topic in the private profile.

The indices shown on the card-faces of the aces, kings, queens and jacks are selected through a (4-)character indices-code. By default the Anglo-American card-indices on the CardDeck (AKQJ) are used.

Colors

The colors of the tableau (background) can be set to your own preference. .....

Automatic Play Level

Specifies the level at which automatic play is enabled. The level is equal to number of possible moves. At level 0 automatic play is permanently disabled, at level 4 automatic play is permanently enabled.

Automatic Start

When the automatic-start option is active, the next game will automatically be presented when the program is started. When the automatic-start option is not active, the program remains in the opening-screen at start-up time with the start-game button enabled.