- by Owen Morton
Okay, let’s talk about FreeCell in earnest. Last time we discussed it, I was complaining about the lack of a decent ending sequence for it. However, it’s obviously got something going for it, because I play it an awful lot. This article focuses on various frightening FreeCell statistics, drawn from my own computer.
As of five to six last night (when this article was actually written), I had – according to the Statistics option on my FreeCell game – won 3549 games of FreeCell, and lost 2943. As any fool can tell you, this adds up to 6492 games of FreeCell in total. That is how many I have ever played.
Thanks to the miracle of my diary, I can tell you with relative certainty that my FreeCell fixation began on Thursday 2nd May 2002. I am fairly sure that I’d never played it before this point, so we’ll say that’s when I played my first game. That means that, in the period 2nd May 2002 to 7th February 2003, I have played 6492 games of FreeCell.
Thanks to the miracle of that old rhyme Thirty Days Hath September, etc, I have been able to work out that since that day until today, there have been 222 days. Therefore, if we divide 6492 by 222, we get the average number of games of FreeCell I play a day. Having a calculator, I have done this sum and discovered that it amounts to 29.243 recurring games a day.
My friends Seb and Steve tell me that this is a scary figure, but then they’re the ones who watch Bargain Hunt, so what do they know? To tell you the truth, I was expecting a much higher figure. 29.243 recurring games amounts to only about an hour’s playing FreeCell a day, and I’m fairly positive that I play it for more. Though I suppose there have been days when I haven’t played FreeCell at all – rare though those days are – so it must straighten itself out.
But this isn’t the most scary statistic yet. I decided to try to find out how many games I’d have to play to get a win rate of 99%. Currently, at 3549 to 2943 games, my win rate is 55%. If we pretend that from hereon in, I will never lose another game of FreeCell, to get a 99% win rate, my current number of losses – 2943 – would have to constitute 1% of the total games played.
Therefore, if we add two zeroes to the end of that figure, we get the number of games of FreeCell that would make 100% of the total. 294300 is therefore 100% of the games, and taking away 1% – 2943 – will provide us with the total number of games I will have to play from now on – without losing any – in order to achieve a 99% win rate. (If this doesn’t seem clear, it’s because I’m incapable of explaining maths in a way that makes it comprehensible. I’m just surprised I’ve managed to do all these sums. I think I’ve got them right. Anyway, just take my word for it.)
Anyway, if my sums are correct, I will have to play 290751 games of FreeCell from now on, without losing any, if I want to get a 99% win rate. That does occur to me that it’s rather a lot of games of FreeCell, especially considering that it’s taken me just over nine months to play a pathetic 6492 games. In fact, this was the next question I asked: how long would it take me to play that many games?
Well. To do this particular mathematical sum, you have to take the average number of games I play a day and divide 290751 by it. I decided to round the recurring figures off, so now the number is just 29.243. 290751 divided by 29.243 comes to 9942.585, a figure which is again rounded. Therefore, it will take me 9942.585 days to get to a 99% win rate, assuming I never lose another game in all that time. For those of us who think in years and months rather than days, that equates to 27.221 years (and that does take leap years into account – I divided 9942.585 by 365.25, for those of you who are checking my calculations).
Putting this in context, it will take me until roughly April 2030 to get a 99% win rate at FreeCell. And I’ll tell you something else: I think it’ll be worth it.