This is the second in a series of articles concerning the fun and strategy behind classic solitaires. You can find excellent digital versions of these games and lots more online, or try sitting down and dealing yourself a hand or two, simply using any standard deck of cards. Be sure to also read about Tri-Peaks Solitaire in Part One of this series.
Most of us have probably heard of five-card draw, the old poker game where players receive five cards and get one chance to replace as many of the five as they'd like, while trying to end up with the best hand possible. A solitaire version of draw poker involves strategic placement of cards and the ability to think ahead.
To play 2-D Poker Solitaire, first remove the jokers from a standard deck of cards and shuffle the deck thoroughly. Give yourself enough space to eventually have a five-by-five grid of cards in front of you. Your objective is to place the cards such that the rows, columns, and diagonals in this grid each make as good of a five-card poker hand as you can manage. Simply deal and place one card at a time. Once you see a card, naturally, you can't just reject it for a different card, and once you place one, you can't move it again. This makes for a game where you must make the best of what you deal.
The scoring for this solitaire is somewhat arbitrary, but just keep in mind the general rankings of poker hands, and you'll know how well you score. You can make up a system of your own, if you like (e.g., one pair is one point, two pair is three, three of a kind is six, and so on.) Straights and flushes are fairly easy to complete. Simply put aside a line for cards of the same suit, or of ranks that are close together. Be prepared, however, to relegate a few lines to, at best, one or two pairs. Full houses are not that easy in comparison, and if you can complete a four of a kind or better, consider yourself both lucky to have drawn the cards and savvy to have left room for them.
A variant on this game more directly involves the "draw" aspect of poker. Once you have played all twenty-five cards in five rows, try replacing at most one card from each row, column, and diagonal with another. It's a challenge in and of itself to avoid replacing more than one card in each line! Also try giving yourself more flexibility by allowing the grid itself to change relative position. For instance, if you place the first card thinking that it should be in the lower-left corner, but with the next card find that the first would be better closer to the middle, simply "shift" the cards toward the upper-right. You can keep doing this as long as the grid's structure allows (usually, as long as no line spans the full five units.)
Keep an eye out for Solitaire Series Part 3 -- Spider Solitaire.
Have fun, and never lose that competitive spirit!
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