The Card Game
The game begins with a shuffled deck of cards, labeled .
The cards are dealt one by one into a sequence of piles on the table, according to the following rules.
- Initially, there are no piles. The first card dealt forms a new pile consisting of the single card.
- Each new card may be placed either on an existing pile whose top card has a value higher than the new card's value, thus increasing the number of cards in that pile, or to the right of all of the existing piles, thus forming a new pile.
- When there are no more cards remaining to deal, the game ends.
The object of the game is to finish with as few piles as possible. D. Aldous and P. Diaconis suggest defining 9 or fewer piles as a winning outcome for, which has approximately 5% chance to happen.
Read more about this topic: Patience Sorting
Famous quotes containing the words card and/or game:
“There is undoubtedly something religious about it: everyone believes that they are special, that they are chosen, that they have a special relation with fate. Here is the test: you turn over card after card to see in which way that is true. If you can defy the odds, you may be saved. And when you are cleaned out, the last penny gone, you are enlightened at last, free perhaps, exhilarated like an ascetic by the falling away of the material world.”
—Andrei Codrescu (b. 1947)
“Wild Bill was indulging in his favorite pastime of a friendly game of cards in the old No. 10 saloon. For the second time in his career, he was sitting with his back to an open door. Jack McCall walked in, shot him through the back of the head, and rushed from the place, only to be captured shortly afterward. Wild Bill’s dead hand held aces and eights, and from that time on this has been known in the West as “the dead man’s hand.””
—State of South Dakota, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)