Quick review: Canfield

If you know one solitaire, chances are it's Klondike, but you're more likely to call it the Solitaire. Thanks to Microsoft, this form of solitaire has made itself the de facto standard, and to many it's the only form they know. As to why this piece starts this way, by virtue of this amount of familiarity Klondike is also the go-to solitaire for many, which as also the case for me, but with an expansion of solitaire knowledge comes a change in preferred defaults. Whenever I decide to play solitaire nowadays I tend to default to Canfield.

Generally seen as a casino-type game thanks to the popular origin story, Canfield is played with a single deck of cards. Deal one 13-card reserve, then a starting card for the foundations then below it a row of four cards for the starting tableau. Three cards are dealt from the stock  every time. Cards are built down on the tableau in alternating color while foundations are built upward by suit, wrapping around from king to ace if need be. If a column of the tableau clears the top card from the reserve fills it, otherwise the top card from the waste pile. You win if all cards are placed on the foundations.

Don't expect to get every card in every time. Heck, don't expect to get that many cards in whenever you play this. The success rate of Canfield is terribly low and there is little sense of progress during play. Most of your time playing will be reshuffling the deck for a new session, a more likely scenario than a complete game.

But why would I keep playing an infuriating game where frustration happens more often than fun? Why would I choose this game as the thing I'd play on my own whenever I pick up a deck of cards? It's small. The layout at the start takes up only a few square feet and is smaller than Klondike. The small layout size also allows for a fast start, fitting for the equally fast end you'll get most of the time.