This guy actually maintains a site dedicated to the Freecell card game:

From: [him]
To: [me]
Date: Sun, 12 Jun 2005 14:44:32 -0400
Subject: FreeCell blog entries

Hi,
I came across your website through FreeCell web searches. I run a very comprehensive website at www.solitairelaboratory.com. A few comments:

re: http://www.joegrossberg.com/archives/000008.html

(1) The algorithm Microsoft uses for dealing is published on my site at http://www.solitairelaboratory.com/mshuffle.txt. This works for the million XP deals too. FreeCell Pro uses the same algorithm to produce 8 billion deals.
(2) There are solutions to most of the hardest deals, including 1941 and 4467, on my site. "Badass" Ryan took the solution he posted for 4467 directly from my site.

re: http://www.joegrossberg.com/archives/002074.html (Jim Boyer)

(1) A fast player can get down around 1 minute per game; I'm not especially fast and I can do 2 or 3 minutes pretty easily. At a minute per game it takes somewhat over 500 hours to solve 32,000 deals. An hour a day for a year or two. Most people who have played the first 32,000 take three years or more, though. Lots of the fastest players play on NetCELL at www.freecell.com.

(2) FreeCell came out in 1992; lots of people were playing in sequence long before Windows 95 came out. The FreeCell Internet Project was finishing up by that time.

(3) I've never heard from anyone who's done the 32,000 deals three times, but over a dozen people I know have done them once. Since XP now has a million deals, most people just continue on past 32,000. I'm starting to get requests for solutions in the thirty and forty thousands.

(4) While many people play the way Boyer does, not putting any cards manually in the freecells, the freecells get used automatically when you move more than one card at a time (unless you have empty columns). It is possible, on about 1 deal in 500, to clear a column quickly and use that to move two cards at a time, eventually clearing more columns to allow longer sequences to be moved. In this way you can play without a card ever touching a freecell. You can do this with FreeCell Pro; the FAQ has details.

Michael Keller
FreeCell FAQ
Solitaire Laboratory

Wow.

No more comments! Either someone has violated Godwin's Law, I'm tired of the discussion or, most likely, the ten-week window has closed. You can, however, contact me through email.