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:
“I must save this government if possible. What I cannot do, of course I will not do; but it may as well be understood, once for all, that I shall not surrender this game leaving any available card unplayed.”
—Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)
“One of life’s primal situations; the game of hide and seek. Oh, the delicious thrill of hiding while the others come looking for you, the delicious terror of being discovered, but what panic when, after a long search, the others abandon you! You mustn’t hide too well. You mustn’t be too good at the game. The player must never be bigger than the game itself.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)