What are some advanced techniques for achieving a high score in Solitaire for iPhone, specifically the 3 Draw variety? I'm looking for more than simply a recitation of the scoring rules packaged with the game.
The current leaderboards in the iPhone Game Center have some ridiculously high scores. How are they able to achieve scores in the 20,000 range when I can barely manage to scrape 4,000 myself?
43 Answers
The secret (which is no real secret) is to finish in as few moves as possible, as fast as you can. If you find a hand you can finish in under 100 moves, replay it several times until you get the moves memorized without having to think about them. Then just keep practicing and watch your times decrease. To get none of the top 25 scores, you'll need a time of around 25 seconds (I'm not sure if this is till the case or not, but times under 25 seconds will not give you the bonus because the programmers assume they're glitches).
You can get to around 12000 by completing the game in about a minute. I've no idea how they get to 25000, unless playing a few seconds quicker is worth exponentially more points.
From the rules on MobilityWare's Solitaire:
"Bonus points are calculated with the formula of 700,000 / (seconds to win the game). If the game takes less than 25 seconds, no bonus points are awarded."
So if you finish a game in 25 seconds you get 28,000 bonus points, in addition to whatever points you get for the game. You have to be really fast to get those 20,000+ scores, and it seems practicing over and over is the only way to get that fast.
