Short Form:

I’m All Alone, There’s Nobody Here Beside me

What’s my dirty little secret? Probably Solitaire. I just can’t get enough of it at the moment. While searching for decent iPhone apps I came across a free version of Solitaire, and decided to have a quick go on it. That was about six months ago, and since then I’ve played it more than most games I’ve paid for. Let’s take a quick look at my statistics:

• Games played – 1811 (766 draw one games and 1045 draw three games)
• Average winning time – 2:20

That works out to around 70 hours worth of Solitaire. I completed Fallout: New Vegas, including the majority of the side quests, in less time than that. Five minutes here and there adds up to quite a lot of time wasted sorting virtual cards. I’m not particularly ashamed of playing Solitaire, but I can’t help but think of how that time could have gone into something more useful.

I suppose most of the time playing a game or two fills a small gap when I have nothing to do, like while watching the kettle boil, or a break at work. I’d play other iPhone games if they would load quick enough. Infinity Blade and Plants vs. Zombies are great, but if I spend a couple of minutes waiting for them to load, it defeats the purpose of doing something instead of waiting. Solitaire takes about five seconds to get into a game.

I never really played Solitaire much on my PC, or with actual cards, but these days I seem to play at least a couple of games a day. I’m a fairly tidy and organised person (most of the time anyway), so somewhere deep down sorting cards into nice neat piles must appeal to my nature.

Disclosure: I played three games of Solitaire while writing this post.