Gaps
Encyclopedia
Gaps is a member of the Montana group of Patience
Patience (game)
Patience is a genre of tabletop games, consisting of card games that can be played by a single player. Patience games can also be played in a multiplayer fashion....

 games, where the arrangement of cards from Deuce (a Two card) to King is the object. Other games in the group include Spaces, Vacancies, Clown Solitaire, Montana itself, and Blue Moon.

Rules

The cards are dealt into four rows of thirteen. The aces are removed and discarded from further play. The gaps that they leave behind are filled by cards that are the same suit and a rank higher than the card on the left of the gap. (For example, 4♣ can be placed beside 3♣.) However, any gap at the right of a King is considered dead and no card can fill it.

Any gap on the left hand side of the row should be placed by a deuce and the row should be built up by suit beside the deuce (i. e. 2-3-4-5, etc.). It is the discretion of the player on which suit would occupy which row.

When there are no more possible moves, the round is over. The cards that are not in order are gathered, making sure to leave any suit sequence (e.g., 2-3-4-5) behind. In Montana and Spaces, the cards are then shuffled; in Gaps, they are not. The cards are then redealt, making sure there is a gap in each row at the immediate right of each suit sequence or at the extreme left of the row if no suit sequence is formed in that row. There are only three rounds in the usual rules. But some variants allow four, and some have no limit.

The game is won when all 48 cards are arranged in numerical order and in suits, with the gaps of each row beside the Kings at the extreme right hand of the row. The probability
Probability
Probability is ordinarily used to describe an attitude of mind towards some proposition of whose truth we arenot certain. The proposition of interest is usually of the form "Will a specific event occur?" The attitude of mind is of the form "How certain are we that the event will occur?" The...

 of winning depends on which rules are followed. In Spaces, where the cards are shuffled after each round and the rounds are limited to three, an experienced player will win perhaps one game in 20. In Gaps (cards are not shuffled, but the limit of three rounds remains), one win in seven games may be expected. If the number of rounds is not limited, winning is just a matter of time, whether the cards are shuffled or not.

Variants

There are two variants of this game.

One variant is called Addiction Solitare, a game developed by GameHouse
GameHouse
GameHouse is a casual game developer, publisher, digital video game distributor, and portal, based in Seattle, Washington, United States-History:...

 for Yahoo!
Yahoo!
Yahoo! Inc. is an American multinational internet corporation headquartered in Sunnyvale, California, United States. The company is perhaps best known for its web portal, search engine , Yahoo! Directory, Yahoo! Mail, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Groups, Yahoo! Answers, advertising, online mapping ,...

 Games. This game is played exactly as Gaps except that there are three reshuffles rather than the standard two and the aces can be used in each reshuffle and redeal to create any gaps.

Software implementations

A software implementation of this game was created by Tim Lister in 1987, and submitted to the Usenet
Usenet
Usenet is a worldwide distributed Internet discussion system. It developed from the general purpose UUCP architecture of the same name.Duke University graduate students Tom Truscott and Jim Ellis conceived the idea in 1979 and it was established in 1980...

 group comp.sources.unix -- http://www.isc.org/index.pl?/sources/games/card/bluemoon.php. Computer programmer Eric Raymond also wrote an updated implementation.

It is also available in Aisleriot Solitaire, from the GNOME
GNOME
GNOME is a desktop environment and graphical user interface that runs on top of a computer operating system. It is composed entirely of free and open source software...

games package
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