I'm genuinely really glad that LocalThunk smashed it with Balatro. They deserve all the success. Also shout-out to The Solitaire Conspiracy, that game is so fire.
@@shmurkles6347 I think they were just using a neutral they (I don't think localthunk's pronouns are known?) rather than suggesting that they are secretly a dev team masquerading as a solo dev
Hey, Italian here! I wanted to note that the ubiquitous nature of French suited playing cards isn't complete and absolute here in Italy, as Piacentine and Napoletane cards are very popular among places that don't have their own local deck. Piacentine and Napoletane are 2 out of the 11 Italian decks with the swords/wands/coins/cups suits, the others being Siciliane, Romagnole, Sarde, Bresciane, Bergamasche, Trentine, Triestine, Trevisane and Bolognesi, all of which are 40-card decks, except the Bresciane which are a 52-card deck. Additionally, there are 4 french-suited decks, all with 40 cards, namely Milanesi, Toscane, Genovesi and Piemontesi. Finally, there's also a German-suited 40 card deck, the Salisburghesi, totaling 16 visually and sometimes mechanically different decks across all Italy. But that's not all! There's a completely unique deck made for playing a game called cucco (or cucù, or stu) that still survives in the area surrounding Montorio al Vomano within the Abruzzo region. That game can still be played with a more common 40-card deck, but it's rare to see it played with that specialized deck, especially outside of the aforementioned area.
I remember when I was growing up in an area with a decent-sized Italian population, I'd see kids at school playing with Italian playing cards. I didn't think much about them until Persona 3 introduced me to the minor arcana of the tarot, and my brain just ground to a "HEY WAIT A MINUTE" halt.
Spanish decks also in my experience use cups swords clubs (though they actually look like clubs rather than being clovers) and coins, but have 48 cards (no 10s) rather than 52 or 40 (though i have seen some with 40 and there are some games that only use 40 cards)
@@wezza668 I'm not too sure myself honestly, shops tend to just either have them or not and it's not the kind of thing you find aimed at tourists. There's 2 main producers of Italian decks, they're Modiano and Dal Negro (it's the founder's unfortunate last name, don't get any ideas) and they both sell on their own websites, but I doubt they ship outside of Italy. You might have some luck with other resellers online. I suggest you either look for Napoletane or Piacentine, those 2 are the most easily readable ones. The others look pretty but are not as readable.
>MFW the Casino doesn't let me stack my deck with steel red sealed polychrome kings and use Baron, Mime, Blueprint, Triboulet, and Sock & Buskin to score over 18 quintillion chips (and then cash out for $6)
As a magician, this was a fascinating watch. I find myself in a lot of conversations about how playing cards are losing their relevance, that people don't understand them anymore, how they've lost their appeal. Having a perspective from someone saying the exact opposite gave me a lot to think about. Also, if you haven't, you should check out the documentary Lost in the Shuffle, it's all about this history of cards and how we ended up with the designs we see today.
I hope that's not true, that'd be deeply depressing. I love the tactile and the combinatorial properties of cards. I love the strategy and chance of the games, and there's something immensely satisfying about a good shuffle. Card magic is also awesome. Unfortunately, I'm also blind and brailled playing cards aren't nearly as nice to handle.
You do see a lot of popular games sold where it’s basically just a rebrand of existing card games. Everybody has a set of cards lying around somewhere and yet people buy the rebrands
@itsnotme6869 I don't doubt you, I'm just not familiar with them, aside from Uno and pictorial decks for young children. I guess those kid's decks might be what you're talking about actually, now that I'm thinking of more stuff like slap jack, old maid, whatever else. I can see some use in that having different deck visuals could help remember/differentiate different rules for different games, but yeah it's pretty unnecessary after age 3 when kid's know their numbers. I was thinking you're talking about more adult games, which I'm not familiar with, so do reply if you have examples.
as someone who spent my Windows XP days exiting fugue states and finding myself in the middle of solitaire games i hadn’t remembered starting, i finally feel seen.
One thing that wasn't mentioned is the advantage that a standard playing card deck gives to implementing randomization. Most people can't visualize a 2/25 chance, but they can understand "if you draw an ace." It also helps to control the spread of options. For example, in dice-based games, there is no limit to your ability to roll well or roll poorly, which means one person _could_ never roll under 15 on their raw D20 while the next person never rolls over 5. But a limited number and selection of playing cards means you can only ever get four kings, four 2s, etc. This makes them useful for the indie TTRPG designers I know who want to ensure nobody has an accidental advantage or disadvantage in play. Having had my own experiences with a bad dice day under a GM who didn't understand "failing forward," I can appreciate enforcing a mix of success and failure for all players.
I mean, 2/25 is pretty simple, my main way to do probability is to normalize to a percentage out of 100 (so multiply until close to 100), IE, an 8% chance in this case. Then my brain will just go "so basically one in twelveish"
What you're talking about is an already solved "issue" of randomization. It has been for decades, in fact. Using pre-built tables to simulate randomness while maintaining a "fair" appearance. In fact, it has variations for various ways of skewing the process for more "enjoyability".
As to the point about there being infinite permutations of decks cards, I heard this story once and found it to be a fun and compelling description of that concept: There are two people, one of shuffling a deck of cards. For every second that passes this person is going through one new permutation. The other person, meanwhile, takes one step over 1 million years. Two steps, two million years, etc. This person does this until they've circumnavigated the entire planet. Once them get back to where they started, they then take one drop of water out of the ocean. One million more years, one more step, one more trip around the world, and they take a second drop of water out of the ocean. They do this until there is no water left in the ocean. Once it's dry, they then take a piece of paper and place it on the ground. One more step, one more pass around the world, and then they put one drop of water back in the ocean. This is done until it is full again. A second piece of paper. This process keeps happening until this stack of paper reaches the sun.... 3000 times. Once that last piece of paper has touched the sun, only then will the first person have finished shuffling that deck of cards and will have seen every permutation of cards.
Shoutouts to Richard Garfield for creating a business model that solves the problem of playing cards disintegrating before becoming historically relevant. Historians in 3,000 years won't know what the symbols for the standard playing card suits looked like but they will find the thirty remaining extant copies of Black Lotus locked away in an antediluvian vault three miles beneath the ruins of Toledo Ohio
I have no idea why, but your delivery of, "But then.....the French" immediately put me in mind of the iconic Orson Welles ad-read "AhhHHHhh...the french...." which I haven't thought about an ages, so thank you for that. Otherwise, another banger Simone video essay!! I was definitely saying "HEY WHAT" alongside you during those beginning bits about the nearly infinite variations of the 52 card deck. The idea that your particularly shuffled deck might be the first time it has existed in that configuration strikes the same kind of existential terror in me that I feel when I think about space too hard.
When you said the game was Sawayama Solitaire my heart skipped a beat. I've been obsessed with solitaire since college and Sawayama Solitaire is my favorite of all time. I played it almost nonstop while I was bedridden for a month, i play it on my phone on the subway and on planes. It's a perfect game.
So funny story: this past year, I went out on a shopping trip with my friend, and at Barnes and Noble I saw these packs of special edition playing cards, along with ones in different themes like Star Wars. I had no idea these existed! So aside from a general reaction of “you don’t get out much, do you,” we went to other gaming stores where I saw more of these pretty, illustrated, ornate decks. I just thought it was so cool how something I thought was pretty classic and relegated to grocery store end caps or front end racks actually has a whole world of art and design enhancing the experience.
Then there’s Uno, a game which I grew up playing with a standard deck of cards (called Last Card) long before I knew there was a special deck that cost much more. A genius marketing move - charge more for a deck of cards that only plays one game.
Wait, I've never even considered people calling "Uno with regular cards" different names somehow, lol. For me it's always been Crazy 8s (cause they're the wild cards). And depending on which house rules you play with you can get enough effect cards to basically recreate Uno (Ones I've seen include 2 = pick up 2, Q = pick up 4, J = skip turn, K = reverse direction, A = take another turn)
I heard Zachtronics and just knew it was a good solitaire variant. They've added them to every single game they've made and they're all incredibly interesting, fun and well-made.
For people who don't get it: you can make a turing complete deck of cards assuming you have infinite cards. Turing complete means that it's basically a computer. (Or can be translated to one) A "simpler" general solution is replacing all logic gates in a computer with cards, and every pixel on the screen is represented by 3 stacks of 255 red, green and blue cards.
The Balatro hype last year led me to want to play it, but also caused me to realize that I didn't even know how to play Klondike Solitaire. So I grabbed the Zachtronics collection and also promptly became addicted to Sawayama Solitaire. I have to wonder how many new (Klondike etc) solitaire players were born this year because of Balatro's influence. Awesome work on the video, loved hearing about the math and history aspects.
The oldest thing I own is a deck of cards I got from a friend in middle school almost 20 years ago. I took it with me when I was deployed in the military, I've moved states three times, and I had to throw out most of my things to fit in a small car at one point, but I'll probably hold on to that deck of cards for the rest of my life.
As someone who obsessively collects playing cards, I can confirm that I don't understand playing cards either. I love them to the point of fault and do not know why.
I also got addicted to the Zachtronic's Solitaire Collection but with Fortune's Foundation, nowhere close to 934 wins but I still try win once per day (emphasis on try). I had not heard about A Solitaire Mystery, thank you for furthering this addiction!
i remember being soooo obsessed with solitaire 3 years ago, the quickest hand i finished (with auto completion) was 0:36 seconds 😭😭 and this year im absolutely HOOKED on balatro, card games are my favourite
they're all good but for me the standout in the zachtronics collection is fortune's foundation, the tarot one. gorgeous, difficult, fun. thanks for the tip about all those other solitaire games though, i haven't heard of all of them and i'm always on the lookout for more
This is hands down the best video I’ve seen from Simone (and that’s saying a lot)! I’m in awe of how well she articulated the magic of playing cards. I’ve always loved them, but she connected all of the dots in a way I have never felt before.
Dang, I was gladly here for the gaming journalist take on playing card history and material culture, but getting Mr. Baba Is You as a subject matter expert? What a treat!
There was a solitaire game I played on my PC that had the games numbered, and you could choose them. I started and 1. Got to about 50,000 before my computer died.
What's funny to me about that is that even if the seed is 32 bits long, that's less than 10,000,000,000 (10 to the 10) different games. it's still far too small to map to every permutation of 52 cards. There are around 10 to the 57 games that will never happen in a game with a 32 bit seed. It would take a seed about 223 bits or 28 bytes long to account for all the possible permutations. In base64, that would look like VGhpcyBpcyB0d2VudHkgZWlnaHQgbGV0dGVycw== (I tried to make that say "Be sure to drink your Ovaltine" but that was too long.)
I recently got my first ever deck of Tarot Cards for Christmas. I have been seeing them in media all my life, but reading through the little booklet and going down my own rabbit hole really did make me realize that these cards are so packed with rich history and meaning. I’ve started making my own little games with them, and it’s unbelievable fun. I even know how to do Tarot readings now (even if they don’t really mean anything). When it comes to games, the cards are the code, and the Tarot is like the ancient code that eventually evolved into the modern 52 card deck. It’s super fascinating stuff.
card games just Hit Different sometimes. my "i've become addicted to this" version of Solitaire for many years was FreeCell. i found a list of how many possible FreeCell deals there were on my version of Windows, made a note of the ones said to be unsolvable, and then went through each deal, one by one, in order [you could type in which number deal you wanted to play and the same number would always be the same deal], with a goal of eventually beating every deal that could possibly be beaten on that system on my own. i did this from middle school and into college. UNFORTUNATELY that laptop died its final death a few years into college, and because i couldn't confirm whether deal number [whatever] on a newer OS would be the same as deal number [same whatever] on my original laptop [Windows Vista, the heinous thing], i was dejected enough to give up and never played FreeCell again. i'd beaten around 10,000 games of FreeCell by then.
This has gone straight into the Favorites. This whole video is incredibly well done and shines a bright light on something that seems niche at first glance but actually has a very large fanbase. I was one of the beta testers for _A Solitaire Mystery_ (and possibly the proverbial wielder of the biggest stick poking him to get that project finished XD ) and there are absolutely incredible ideas in there which were NOT easy to implement at all - I'm as impressed by it now as ever, and it's great to see it getting some exposure. I collect physical decks of cards (when I can afford to) and there's something just naturally satisfying about holding and shuffling them, and getting to solve a little puzzle afterward in the form of Penguin solitaire is the icing on the cake.
Cards has always been a fascination and joy for me. I love that they have found a resurgence beyond poker. I have been playing Euchre, Spades, Hearts, and all kinds of card games with friends and it fills me with joy.
For those having problem trying to grasp the "more states than atoms in the Earth", type "52!" on your favourite calculator. edit: No, Simone. You're not making weird movements with your hands. And that's coming from a person very self-aware of their hands >.
Literally, playing cards and card games have fascinated me all my life and I've been in love with the probabilities and the strategy behind so many games!!
Fun fact! There was a card game played with 4-6 decks of regular playing cards that had all the rules of Uno at least 10 years before the Uno deck was first conceived. The version I played was called Nosh.
I love Regency Solitaire. I also used to do challenge runs on classic Klondike Solitaire (like where you wouldn't put up any cards in the final area until you finished out the entire run in the main area).
Simone: I've become addicted to solitaire Me: OH that sounds like me and the Zachtronics solitaire stand alone game Simone seconds later: It's Zachtronics' Sawayama Solitaire The man was truly a menace with how good his games are. I hope he's enjoying teaching.
I'm a game developer, and I realized that my interest in computer games stems back to, naturally, watching my grandpa playing Spider Solitaire on his desktop PC. I'd watch him play over his shoulder, and eventually he sat me down and let me have a good at it. I was hooked, and now here I am years later, making games and still playing with cards.
I was so compelled by the playing card facts in this video that it took me almost fourteen full minutes to notice how incredible Simone's shirt is in this video
I've been getting really into playing Regicide recently - a co-op card game with fantasy ttrpg vibes where a group of misfit rebels band together to defeat the 12 face cards and overthrow the kingdom. Being played with a standard set of cards gives it this aura like you could be playing in a bar in the old west, or a fantasy tavern, or even 400 years ago in the servant's quarters. Timeless themes, playing cards and overthrowing the ruling class! Being co-op, it has more in common with a solitaire, and it gets really tricky fast. According to the rules, you're not supposed to discuss your cards at all (that one gets fudged a little in my house) isolating each player in their own puzzle. Unrelated but alongside the growing popularity and evolution of solitaires, I also love seeing trick-takers find new footing and exciting twists. Cat in the Box is a masterpiece of a puzzle trick-taker that combines quantum physics with probability.
My sister has always liked playing cards and sort of collected them, and her collection has grown quite a bit in just the past few months since she mentioned it to a coworker lol. Her favorite deck is and always has been a now 20+ year old used casino deck, with the corners cut. she recently tried playing solitare with her newer decks and realized she doesn't like the feel of any of them. I then realized that the "default" card deck I imagine has the corners cut, because that casino deck was just about the only deck of cards I ever saw growing up!
We love the video content Polygon, please make more! I miss the days of constant kooky uploads from all kinds of different journalists and all kinds of different ideas. Yall are so good at fostering creativity in the gaming journalism space and I selfishly want so much more
The Jokers were developed to be used as bowers in the game Euchre, which evolved from a German card game that used the German card deck. It was popular across the U.S. for a while and is still big in parts of the Midwest.
i dunno... my favorite thing about the current microsoft solitaire is that i never ever loose. in fact.... with the tri-peaks one it was honestly more satisfactory to use the solver to do it for you. like... solitaire is a decent thing to do to pass some time without having to think so much. when gamepass is having a slow spell. but seriously... the best part of solitaire is knowing that i will win every game i start. (even if i do sometimes on very rare occasions encounter a klondike deal i need to use the solver for) ... i used to play the old version on win 98 till i won... so it's nice to not feel stuck... 'cause i win every time on easy and medium difficulty. like... maybe the early struggles is why the easy mode feels like a satisfying victory.... but the easy mode always win is what's satisfying not the promise or hope of that.
Balatro and Solitär have one thing in common that makes them so adicting, the need to adapt strategie on a whim and allways adjust your gameplay. This gives endless small rewards while playing wich in return makes us want to play more.
I had picked up A Solitaire Mystery a while back because I loved Noita. It's pretty exciting to hear an interview with Hempuli, but I really need to go back to his mystery collection.
I bet Hasbro wizards of the Coast is regretting their stupidity during this card boom since nobody wants to touch their product now and they're probably going to be bought out by someone more reasonable is my hot take
It would also be relevant to mention the similarity between playing cards and tarot minor arcana. It's 4 suits, 10 number cards, and 4 face cards instead of 3.
The history of playing cards is something i find fascinating, because they're so disposable. The French cards are i think the most modern innovation - there are German cards, Italian and Spanish cards, which all have different designs. Those are the ones i know of in Europe.
Shout out to the spanish playing cards and the cool ass games that dont get enough love, we got conquian and brisca on deck! I just wish they got their time in the spotlight as well 💔
Had a bit of a fan girl moment when i found out that the interviewee Hempuli is the Baba is You creator! That game is fiendish - ruthlessly makes me feel stupid until a moment where I suddenly feel like a genius
13:40 grrr you are oversimplifying it and I do want to yell at you! Like I'm pretty sure the bigger spread of knowledge situation was from trade. Lots of trade in the mediterranean, most famously Italian merchants.
That is a really good point and also something I think is generally overlooked!! These cultures were never just silo’d off from each other. But that’s another video 😂 -Simone
This is video is very motivating! I have a rogue-like dungeon delving card game that is complete but needs to be made into a video game to be more accessible, and this has given me so many new ideas and a bit of hope too!
As someone addicted to solitaire, i feel like i have to mention that double solitaire exists! You can play it simultaneously with someone else (which turns it into a competitive and very fast-paced game) AND you can also play it with more than 2 people! Quintuple solitaire goes hard
I own two Ganjifa decks, and I have a copy of David Parlett's "The History of Playing Cards" on my shelf. I have invented a few games, including a form of solitaire. There are one or two points where this video is at odds with other sources, but I don't want to get into that, I just want to say that I appreciate you making it. The world needs more videos about cards.
I was working on an RPG one time with a minigame that was a bit of a cross between poker and tarot. But I was much younger and oblivious to the statistical rabbit hole I was trying to crawl down when I was trying to analyze the odds of drawing winning hands by letting players customize the deck by adding and removing suits, faces and numbers. If I had approached it as a roguelike where the deck composition would ultimately reset, I'd have probably gotten somewhere with it. Instead I grappled with trying to balance the minigame and it didn't go well.
I played do much Solitaire when I was at my first post-college job. I was getting the work done faster than they seemed to expect and I didn't want to get more work handed to me, so Spider Solitaire became my pastime. I can't imagine how much better it would have been to play these newfangled Solitaire variants.
Note that this was filmed in early December. I have now beaten 1,309 games of Sawayama Solitaire. - Simone
simone oh no
Play fortunes foundation, then get back to me. Closing in on 200 wins.
At what point should emergency services be notified?
Was this video supposed to release on what would have been Elvis' 90th birthday?
@@jaykaye594 i felt so accomplished with that first win on fortune’s foundation. It is very unforgiving
Winning 934 games of Solitaire seems like a cry for help
It is
A cry for more solitaire
I scream. You scream. For more solitaire.
934 games of *one version* of Solitaire as well, mind you.
I have no mouth & I must solitaire
I'm genuinely really glad that LocalThunk smashed it with Balatro. They deserve all the success. Also shout-out to The Solitaire Conspiracy, that game is so fire.
they? lol
@@shmurkles6347they can be used singularly 😭
@@shmurkles6347 I think they were just using a neutral they (I don't think localthunk's pronouns are known?) rather than suggesting that they are secretly a dev team masquerading as a solo dev
@shmurkles6347 to be fair, they're fully anonymous so....?
a singular they, mind you
so any solitaire is basically a roguelike
TRUE
so basically, Balatro is a type of solitaire
"Despite being a card game, Balatro is actually a roguelike"
Rather, roguelite was inspired directly by solitare lol
@@ButtersDClown They said roguelike, not roguelite.
Hey, Italian here! I wanted to note that the ubiquitous nature of French suited playing cards isn't complete and absolute here in Italy, as Piacentine and Napoletane cards are very popular among places that don't have their own local deck. Piacentine and Napoletane are 2 out of the 11 Italian decks with the swords/wands/coins/cups suits, the others being Siciliane, Romagnole, Sarde, Bresciane, Bergamasche, Trentine, Triestine, Trevisane and Bolognesi, all of which are 40-card decks, except the Bresciane which are a 52-card deck. Additionally, there are 4 french-suited decks, all with 40 cards, namely Milanesi, Toscane, Genovesi and Piemontesi. Finally, there's also a German-suited 40 card deck, the Salisburghesi, totaling 16 visually and sometimes mechanically different decks across all Italy.
But that's not all! There's a completely unique deck made for playing a game called cucco (or cucù, or stu) that still survives in the area surrounding Montorio al Vomano within the Abruzzo region. That game can still be played with a more common 40-card deck, but it's rare to see it played with that specialized deck, especially outside of the aforementioned area.
I remember when I was growing up in an area with a decent-sized Italian population, I'd see kids at school playing with Italian playing cards. I didn't think much about them until Persona 3 introduced me to the minor arcana of the tarot, and my brain just ground to a "HEY WAIT A MINUTE" halt.
Spanish decks also in my experience use cups swords clubs (though they actually look like clubs rather than being clovers) and coins, but have 48 cards (no 10s) rather than 52 or 40 (though i have seen some with 40 and there are some games that only use 40 cards)
Do you guys play Truco?
when i was on vacation in Northern Italy I tried hard to find a true Italian playing card deck, but was unsuccesful. Where are these being sold?
@@wezza668 I'm not too sure myself honestly, shops tend to just either have them or not and it's not the kind of thing you find aimed at tourists. There's 2 main producers of Italian decks, they're Modiano and Dal Negro (it's the founder's unfortunate last name, don't get any ideas) and they both sell on their own websites, but I doubt they ship outside of Italy. You might have some luck with other resellers online. I suggest you either look for Napoletane or Piacentine, those 2 are the most easily readable ones. The others look pretty but are not as readable.
went to vegas and got kicked out of a casino for screaming about multipliers at the poker tables.
>MFW the Casino doesn't let me stack my deck with steel red sealed polychrome kings and use Baron, Mime, Blueprint, Triboulet, and Sock & Buskin to score over 18 quintillion chips (and then cash out for $6)
@@Vantastic789You've won the internet for today.
@@Vantastic789you see, just get a rocket out for at least 3 games and you’ll be raking in so much more money
@@Vantastic789I feel their problem is, you don't buy the Jokers and extra decks from their shop. Bringing your own cards is against the rule
WHAT DO YOU MEAN I CAN'T USE 4 FINGERS TO MAKE A STRAIGHT WITH ONLY 4 CARDS
As a magician, this was a fascinating watch. I find myself in a lot of conversations about how playing cards are losing their relevance, that people don't understand them anymore, how they've lost their appeal. Having a perspective from someone saying the exact opposite gave me a lot to think about.
Also, if you haven't, you should check out the documentary Lost in the Shuffle, it's all about this history of cards and how we ended up with the designs we see today.
Thanks for the recommendation!
I hope that's not true, that'd be deeply depressing. I love the tactile and the combinatorial properties of cards. I love the strategy and chance of the games, and there's something immensely satisfying about a good shuffle. Card magic is also awesome. Unfortunately, I'm also blind and brailled playing cards aren't nearly as nice to handle.
You do see a lot of popular games sold where it’s basically just a rebrand of existing card games. Everybody has a set of cards lying around somewhere and yet people buy the rebrands
@itsnotme6869 I don't doubt you, I'm just not familiar with them, aside from Uno and pictorial decks for young children. I guess those kid's decks might be what you're talking about actually, now that I'm thinking of more stuff like slap jack, old maid, whatever else. I can see some use in that having different deck visuals could help remember/differentiate different rules for different games, but yeah it's pretty unnecessary after age 3 when kid's know their numbers. I was thinking you're talking about more adult games, which I'm not familiar with, so do reply if you have examples.
I took a break from playing Balatro to watch this. That’s how much I love Simone videos. And…. Balatro….
as someone who spent my Windows XP days exiting fugue states and finding myself in the middle of solitaire games i hadn’t remembered starting, i finally feel seen.
One thing that wasn't mentioned is the advantage that a standard playing card deck gives to implementing randomization. Most people can't visualize a 2/25 chance, but they can understand "if you draw an ace."
It also helps to control the spread of options. For example, in dice-based games, there is no limit to your ability to roll well or roll poorly, which means one person _could_ never roll under 15 on their raw D20 while the next person never rolls over 5. But a limited number and selection of playing cards means you can only ever get four kings, four 2s, etc.
This makes them useful for the indie TTRPG designers I know who want to ensure nobody has an accidental advantage or disadvantage in play. Having had my own experiences with a bad dice day under a GM who didn't understand "failing forward," I can appreciate enforcing a mix of success and failure for all players.
I mean, 2/25 is pretty simple, my main way to do probability is to normalize to a percentage out of 100 (so multiply until close to 100), IE, an 8% chance in this case. Then my brain will just go "so basically one in twelveish"
What you're talking about is an already solved "issue" of randomization. It has been for decades, in fact. Using pre-built tables to simulate randomness while maintaining a "fair" appearance. In fact, it has variations for various ways of skewing the process for more "enjoyability".
Simone: Carpal Tunnel
Patrick: Card-pal Tunnel
Simone: 😮
even better, I think it was 'card-pull tunnel'. carpal tunnel from pulling too many cards :D
As to the point about there being infinite permutations of decks cards, I heard this story once and found it to be a fun and compelling description of that concept: There are two people, one of shuffling a deck of cards. For every second that passes this person is going through one new permutation. The other person, meanwhile, takes one step over 1 million years. Two steps, two million years, etc. This person does this until they've circumnavigated the entire planet. Once them get back to where they started, they then take one drop of water out of the ocean. One million more years, one more step, one more trip around the world, and they take a second drop of water out of the ocean. They do this until there is no water left in the ocean. Once it's dry, they then take a piece of paper and place it on the ground. One more step, one more pass around the world, and then they put one drop of water back in the ocean. This is done until it is full again. A second piece of paper. This process keeps happening until this stack of paper reaches the sun.... 3000 times. Once that last piece of paper has touched the sun, only then will the first person have finished shuffling that deck of cards and will have seen every permutation of cards.
I believe it is actually a BILLION years, not a million 😮
Shoutouts to Richard Garfield for creating a business model that solves the problem of playing cards disintegrating before becoming historically relevant. Historians in 3,000 years won't know what the symbols for the standard playing card suits looked like but they will find the thirty remaining extant copies of Black Lotus locked away in an antediluvian vault three miles beneath the ruins of Toledo Ohio
the historians will know the card symbols but only because of my archive of homestuck two vaults over
Not if I can my heist together....
I have no idea why, but your delivery of, "But then.....the French" immediately put me in mind of the iconic Orson Welles ad-read "AhhHHHhh...the french...." which I haven't thought about an ages, so thank you for that.
Otherwise, another banger Simone video essay!! I was definitely saying "HEY WHAT" alongside you during those beginning bits about the nearly infinite variations of the 52 card deck. The idea that your particularly shuffled deck might be the first time it has existed in that configuration strikes the same kind of existential terror in me that I feel when I think about space too hard.
It was ... ON PURPOSE!!! (the Orson Welles reference!)
@@polygon Oh, this OVERJOYS me actually.
@@mindthesarchasmand it likely overjoys them for someone actually getting the reference!
When you said the game was Sawayama Solitaire my heart skipped a beat. I've been obsessed with solitaire since college and Sawayama Solitaire is my favorite of all time. I played it almost nonstop while I was bedridden for a month, i play it on my phone on the subway and on planes. It's a perfect game.
love a good zachtronics game
What app on phone?
@ it’s called “Zachtronics Solitaire” on iOS and Android
@@emeryboehnke4259 called "zachtronics solitaire"
@@emeryboehnke4259 Zachtronics Solitaire Collection
I hadn't considered how _Balatro_ was less Poker and more Solitaire, but the comparison seems obvious now.
Solitaire just means single player, balatro is a Solitaire poker game, both are correct
…genuinely? It’s barely even poker lmao. Did you just not pay attention? 😂
So funny story: this past year, I went out on a shopping trip with my friend, and at Barnes and Noble I saw these packs of special edition playing cards, along with ones in different themes like Star Wars. I had no idea these existed! So aside from a general reaction of “you don’t get out much, do you,” we went to other gaming stores where I saw more of these pretty, illustrated, ornate decks. I just thought it was so cool how something I thought was pretty classic and relegated to grocery store end caps or front end racks actually has a whole world of art and design enhancing the experience.
I had the same feeling when I learned that Tarot is an actual game you can play, it's not just for fortune telling.
I’ve started collecting those fancy decks.
I stopped watching a Balatro seed science video to watch this. I'm glad I did.
Also SIMONE, that top!!! It's gorgeous! Slay.
It is a JUMPSUIT
@@polygonHOLY CRAP that's even better!!!
It's giving rhinestone video essayist
@@polygonfit for a magician
sigh.. 69 after 9h
Seeing a new Simone video is like getting exactly the card I need in Balatro
Then there’s Uno, a game which I grew up playing with a standard deck of cards (called Last Card) long before I knew there was a special deck that cost much more. A genius marketing move - charge more for a deck of cards that only plays one game.
My niece was given a collection of card decks that are each designed for a specific game - Old Maid, Go Fish, War, and so on. It seems so unnecessary.
We call it Blackjack in my family because the Black Jacks are the pick-up 5s (Red Jack cancels the black).
Wait, I've never even considered people calling "Uno with regular cards" different names somehow, lol. For me it's always been Crazy 8s (cause they're the wild cards). And depending on which house rules you play with you can get enough effect cards to basically recreate Uno (Ones I've seen include 2 = pick up 2, Q = pick up 4, J = skip turn, K = reverse direction, A = take another turn)
Uno is just Crazy 8s with more special cards.
I heard Zachtronics and just knew it was a good solitaire variant. They've added them to every single game they've made and they're all incredibly interesting, fun and well-made.
Every game is a card game. Topographically, you can recreate any game with decks of cards.
Technically Magic: The Gathering is turing complete, so therefore with enough cards you could also recreate any video game as well
For people who don't get it: you can make a turing complete deck of cards assuming you have infinite cards.
Turing complete means that it's basically a computer. (Or can be translated to one)
A "simpler" general solution is replacing all logic gates in a computer with cards, and every pixel on the screen is represented by 3 stacks of 255 red, green and blue cards.
Very cool comment and replies, thank you everyone😁
@@MinecraftianPony the funny thing is that I wrote my message before seeing yours.
Can’t wait to play Doom on playing cards
The Balatro hype last year led me to want to play it, but also caused me to realize that I didn't even know how to play Klondike Solitaire. So I grabbed the Zachtronics collection and also promptly became addicted to Sawayama Solitaire. I have to wonder how many new (Klondike etc) solitaire players were born this year because of Balatro's influence.
Awesome work on the video, loved hearing about the math and history aspects.
I love that Simone, after learning the intended pronunciation of Balatro, keeps actually using it ❤
The oldest thing I own is a deck of cards I got from a friend in middle school almost 20 years ago. I took it with me when I was deployed in the military, I've moved states three times, and I had to throw out most of my things to fit in a small car at one point, but I'll probably hold on to that deck of cards for the rest of my life.
As someone who obsessively collects playing cards, I can confirm that I don't understand playing cards either. I love them to the point of fault and do not know why.
I love the feel of the cards in my hands
Love seeing the shoutout to professor Diaconis. Been super interested in his research ever since he had some guest videos on Numberphile
I also got addicted to the Zachtronic's Solitaire Collection but with Fortune's Foundation, nowhere close to 934 wins but I still try win once per day (emphasis on try). I had not heard about A Solitaire Mystery, thank you for furthering this addiction!
i remember being soooo obsessed with solitaire 3 years ago, the quickest hand i finished (with auto completion) was 0:36 seconds 😭😭 and this year im absolutely HOOKED on balatro, card games are my favourite
they're all good but for me the standout in the zachtronics collection is fortune's foundation, the tarot one. gorgeous, difficult, fun.
thanks for the tip about all those other solitaire games though, i haven't heard of all of them and i'm always on the lookout for more
Balatro broke me going for gold sticker on every joker, but the game was so good I just had to keep pushing on.
How close are you?
I'm super glad to see Zachtronics get recognition like this. I am utterly addicted to Fortune's Foundation
I guess you could say... it's alll in the cards.
woah!
Just want to take a moment to appreciate Simone's bejeweled jacket! It looks so good!
Edit: Apparently it's a jumpsuit! Even more rad!
This fit+makeup combo basically means Simone is a demigoddess of some sort
1:51 yeah basically everyone forgets that 52 elements in any state (order) is a lot of ways to stack a deck
This is hands down the best video I’ve seen from Simone (and that’s saying a lot)! I’m in awe of how well she articulated the magic of playing cards. I’ve always loved them, but she connected all of the dots in a way I have never felt before.
So many games, Solitaire time...
BOO THIS MAN (Incredibly well done, congratulations) BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Dang, I was gladly here for the gaming journalist take on playing card history and material culture, but getting Mr. Baba Is You as a subject matter expert? What a treat!
Thanks for showing our Regency Solitaire II game at the start :-) Solitaire is Life!
There was a solitaire game I played on my PC that had the games numbered, and you could choose them. I started and 1. Got to about 50,000 before my computer died.
It wouldn't happen to be FunSol97 would it? I remember my mom absolutely loving that game and it had a ton of different variants of solitaire
What's funny to me about that is that even if the seed is 32 bits long, that's less than 10,000,000,000 (10 to the 10) different games. it's still far too small to map to every permutation of 52 cards. There are around 10 to the 57 games that will never happen in a game with a 32 bit seed. It would take a seed about 223 bits or 28 bytes long to account for all the possible permutations. In base64, that would look like
VGhpcyBpcyB0d2VudHkgZWlnaHQgbGV0dGVycw==
(I tried to make that say "Be sure to drink your Ovaltine" but that was too long.)
I recently got my first ever deck of Tarot Cards for Christmas. I have been seeing them in media all my life, but reading through the little booklet and going down my own rabbit hole really did make me realize that these cards are so packed with rich history and meaning. I’ve started making my own little games with them, and it’s unbelievable fun. I even know how to do Tarot readings now (even if they don’t really mean anything).
When it comes to games, the cards are the code, and the Tarot is like the ancient code that eventually evolved into the modern 52 card deck. It’s super fascinating stuff.
never felt more seen than a polygon video talking about last call bbs solitaire, ty
Running away to become a magician is also known as ‘planes walking’
card games just Hit Different sometimes. my "i've become addicted to this" version of Solitaire for many years was FreeCell. i found a list of how many possible FreeCell deals there were on my version of Windows, made a note of the ones said to be unsolvable, and then went through each deal, one by one, in order [you could type in which number deal you wanted to play and the same number would always be the same deal], with a goal of eventually beating every deal that could possibly be beaten on that system on my own. i did this from middle school and into college. UNFORTUNATELY that laptop died its final death a few years into college, and because i couldn't confirm whether deal number [whatever] on a newer OS would be the same as deal number [same whatever] on my original laptop [Windows Vista, the heinous thing], i was dejected enough to give up and never played FreeCell again. i'd beaten around 10,000 games of FreeCell by then.
Cat at 8:37.
Why is it a minecraft cat ._.
Video-essays from Simone are always the perfect union of informative and delightful.
This has gone straight into the Favorites. This whole video is incredibly well done and shines a bright light on something that seems niche at first glance but actually has a very large fanbase. I was one of the beta testers for _A Solitaire Mystery_ (and possibly the proverbial wielder of the biggest stick poking him to get that project finished XD ) and there are absolutely incredible ideas in there which were NOT easy to implement at all - I'm as impressed by it now as ever, and it's great to see it getting some exposure. I collect physical decks of cards (when I can afford to) and there's something just naturally satisfying about holding and shuffling them, and getting to solve a little puzzle afterward in the form of Penguin solitaire is the icing on the cake.
i love the way she smiled about the ivory/shell pieces probably having “great sounds,” our minds think alike that way!!!💛
Cards has always been a fascination and joy for me. I love that they have found a resurgence beyond poker. I have been playing Euchre, Spades, Hearts, and all kinds of card games with friends and it fills me with joy.
Really loved this deep-dive, and appreciate the amount of research that went into this.
Nice one Polygon.
This is such an amazing video! I absolutely adore the discussion of the history of playing cards and where the iconography came from!
For those having problem trying to grasp the "more states than atoms in the Earth", type "52!" on your favourite calculator.
edit: No, Simone. You're not making weird movements with your hands. And that's coming from a person very self-aware of their hands >.
Literally, playing cards and card games have fascinated me all my life and I've been in love with the probabilities and the strategy behind so many games!!
Fun fact! There was a card game played with 4-6 decks of regular playing cards that had all the rules of Uno at least 10 years before the Uno deck was first conceived. The version I played was called Nosh.
I love Regency Solitaire. I also used to do challenge runs on classic Klondike Solitaire (like where you wouldn't put up any cards in the final area until you finished out the entire run in the main area).
Check out Shadowhand Solitaire if you want a different historical theme with your slice of solitaire 🙂
Simone: I've become addicted to solitaire
Me: OH that sounds like me and the Zachtronics solitaire stand alone game
Simone seconds later: It's Zachtronics' Sawayama Solitaire
The man was truly a menace with how good his games are. I hope he's enjoying teaching.
The character and humor in this video is infinitely endearing
I'm a game developer, and I realized that my interest in computer games stems back to, naturally, watching my grandpa playing Spider Solitaire on his desktop PC. I'd watch him play over his shoulder, and eventually he sat me down and let me have a good at it. I was hooked, and now here I am years later, making games and still playing with cards.
Zachtronics Solitaire Collection is SEVERLY slept on. Sawayama is so good. Fortune's Foundation is one of the best games i've ever played.
I was so compelled by the playing card facts in this video that it took me almost fourteen full minutes to notice how incredible Simone's shirt is in this video
I've been getting really into playing Regicide recently - a co-op card game with fantasy ttrpg vibes where a group of misfit rebels band together to defeat the 12 face cards and overthrow the kingdom. Being played with a standard set of cards gives it this aura like you could be playing in a bar in the old west, or a fantasy tavern, or even 400 years ago in the servant's quarters. Timeless themes, playing cards and overthrowing the ruling class!
Being co-op, it has more in common with a solitaire, and it gets really tricky fast. According to the rules, you're not supposed to discuss your cards at all (that one gets fudged a little in my house) isolating each player in their own puzzle.
Unrelated but alongside the growing popularity and evolution of solitaires, I also love seeing trick-takers find new footing and exciting twists. Cat in the Box is a masterpiece of a puzzle trick-taker that combines quantum physics with probability.
Awesome video! Love the structure and investigative aspect to it! Hope to see more materials like this in the channel.
The zachtronics solitaire collection is so incredible taught me so so so much about what a good solitaire style game can and should be
My sister has always liked playing cards and sort of collected them, and her collection has grown quite a bit in just the past few months since she mentioned it to a coworker lol. Her favorite deck is and always has been a now 20+ year old used casino deck, with the corners cut. she recently tried playing solitare with her newer decks and realized she doesn't like the feel of any of them. I then realized that the "default" card deck I imagine has the corners cut, because that casino deck was just about the only deck of cards I ever saw growing up!
I did the voice over at the beginning of Regency Solitaire! I hope you liked it 😂
We did!
We love the video content Polygon, please make more! I miss the days of constant kooky uploads from all kinds of different journalists and all kinds of different ideas. Yall are so good at fostering creativity in the gaming journalism space and I selfishly want so much more
you just introduced me into so many more days and weeks of solitaire.....thank you for your service
15:20 That's hilarious and very On-Brand for us in the U.S.
The Jokers were developed to be used as bowers in the game Euchre, which evolved from a German card game that used the German card deck. It was popular across the U.S. for a while and is still big in parts of the Midwest.
What a wonderful document. This video should be archived along with a few pristine Bicycle decks
I remember comparing computer solitaire win streaks with friends in high school. 2004 was a hell of a time.
The french suit hasn't entirely taken over! I grew up with swiss Jass cards and italian Scopa cards.
what's the game at 4:40 ?
Wilmot Works It Out
it's a sort of sequel to Wilmot's Warehouse
i dunno... my favorite thing about the current microsoft solitaire is that i never ever loose. in fact.... with the tri-peaks one it was honestly more satisfactory to use the solver to do it for you. like... solitaire is a decent thing to do to pass some time without having to think so much. when gamepass is having a slow spell. but seriously... the best part of solitaire is knowing that i will win every game i start. (even if i do sometimes on very rare occasions encounter a klondike deal i need to use the solver for) ... i used to play the old version on win 98 till i won... so it's nice to not feel stuck... 'cause i win every time on easy and medium difficulty. like... maybe the early struggles is why the easy mode feels like a satisfying victory.... but the easy mode always win is what's satisfying not the promise or hope of that.
Balatro and Solitär have one thing in common that makes them so adicting, the need to adapt strategie on a whim and allways adjust your gameplay. This gives endless small rewards while playing wich in return makes us want to play more.
I had picked up A Solitaire Mystery a while back because I loved Noita. It's pretty exciting to hear an interview with Hempuli, but I really need to go back to his mystery collection.
I bet Hasbro wizards of the Coast is regretting their stupidity during this card boom since nobody wants to touch their product now and they're probably going to be bought out by someone more reasonable is my hot take
I agree, minus the reasonable part
The joke about the slippery slope leading to a sad fate of a degree in statistics earned my like, but the whole video after does too!
It would also be relevant to mention the similarity between playing cards and tarot minor arcana. It's 4 suits, 10 number cards, and 4 face cards instead of 3.
The history of playing cards is something i find fascinating, because they're so disposable. The French cards are i think the most modern innovation - there are German cards, Italian and Spanish cards, which all have different designs. Those are the ones i know of in Europe.
14:08 - footnote: Not the whole of math, just the useful part of it
Shout out to the spanish playing cards and the cool ass games that dont get enough love, we got conquian and brisca on deck! I just wish they got their time in the spotlight as well 💔
Had a bit of a fan girl moment when i found out that the interviewee Hempuli is the Baba is You creator! That game is fiendish - ruthlessly makes me feel stupid until a moment where I suddenly feel like a genius
not me unknowingly putting this on as backround noise while indulging my solitaire addiction
Simone, this is my favorite video of yours yet. I aspire to have your dedication to solitaire!
My mom was addicted to that exact solitaire game she would always play at least one round, often more, while we kids were getting ready for school
13:40 grrr you are oversimplifying it and I do want to yell at you!
Like I'm pretty sure the bigger spread of knowledge situation was from trade. Lots of trade in the mediterranean, most famously Italian merchants.
That is a really good point and also something I think is generally overlooked!! These cultures were never just silo’d off from each other. But that’s another video 😂 -Simone
This is video is very motivating! I have a rogue-like dungeon delving card game that is complete but needs to be made into a video game to be more accessible, and this has given me so many new ideas and a bit of hope too!
The path from magician to world renowned statistics mathematician is crazy!
really good and funny script and absolutely excellent delivery on this one!!!
As someone addicted to solitaire, i feel like i have to mention that double solitaire exists! You can play it simultaneously with someone else (which turns it into a competitive and very fast-paced game) AND you can also play it with more than 2 people! Quintuple solitaire goes hard
I own two Ganjifa decks, and I have a copy of David Parlett's "The History of Playing Cards" on my shelf. I have invented a few games, including a form of solitaire. There are one or two points where this video is at odds with other sources, but I don't want to get into that, I just want to say that I appreciate you making it. The world needs more videos about cards.
I was working on an RPG one time with a minigame that was a bit of a cross between poker and tarot. But I was much younger and oblivious to the statistical rabbit hole I was trying to crawl down when I was trying to analyze the odds of drawing winning hands by letting players customize the deck by adding and removing suits, faces and numbers. If I had approached it as a roguelike where the deck composition would ultimately reset, I'd have probably gotten somewhere with it. Instead I grappled with trying to balance the minigame and it didn't go well.
I absolutely reccomend to play:
*Everything Everywhere, all at Cards*
An amazing game that combined regular cards, Tarots and Uno cards 😮
I can't believe i missed regency solitaire 2 being released!!! I loved the first one!!!
Glad you found it! Enjoy :-)
I played do much Solitaire when I was at my first post-college job. I was getting the work done faster than they seemed to expect and I didn't want to get more work handed to me, so Spider Solitaire became my pastime. I can't imagine how much better it would have been to play these newfangled Solitaire variants.
My name is Klondike, I am happy it is associated with a solitaire in some people's minds and not just an ice cream bar
Simone, never change. Polygon, never change. These videos are such a treat.
a bit over a year ago I also fell face-first into solitaire and got so confused as to why I couldn't find extensive helpful tips and tricks online
I love how well thought out these videos are.
You mention cards made of shells... shuffling that deck must have been a nightmare.