Proletariat’s Patience Strategy?

[swim]

Hello,
I am new to the world of solitaire. Despite having been around people playing it a ton since the 90's I only started playing solitaire games myself a few weeks ago, and luckily stumbled onto this collection.

I am having difficulty with Proletariat’s Patience. I have won a few games of Sawayama and Sigmar's Garden, but now on Proletariat’s Patience I can't seem to make much progress.

If any of you could offer some tips or basic strategies to keep in mind for this game I would appreciate it! :)

[puzzl]

This is the first mode in the list that stresses a couple important strategy you'll find through all the rest of the games: don't overcommit, and always leave an empty column.

Overcommiting, in this case, means making an unnecessary move that doesn't leave us at an advantage. For instance, imagine one stack is a single Heart and the next stack is x/x/x/H/H/H. The initial reaction would be to play the three hearts onto the single heart on an otherwise empty stack, and close the stack. But this is overcommiting: it nets us nothing, but permanently removes a spot on the board. The right move here is to play the single heart onto the triple, thereby leaving an empty stack, an *only close the heart stack when you need the card under it.*

Whenever you're planning a move, you need to look at the cards under your move and figure out where they're going. Trace the movement as far as you can: if I close this Heart stack then I can move the 6 and then the 8, which will leave an empty column. Perfect! But, maybe you get to "I can move the 6 and then the 8, but then there's a diamond under there I can't do anything with." Don't make that move, because you'll leave yourself in a disadvantageous position: even though you've stacked 2 cards and closed the hearts, now you've replaced your empty stack with a 1-card stack and you're stuck.

[swim]

Originally posted by puzzl:

This is the first mode in the list that stresses a couple important strategy you'll find through all the rest of the games: don't overcommit, and always leave an empty column.

Overcommiting, in this case, means making an unnecessary move that doesn't leave us at an advantage. For instance, imagine one stack is a single Heart and the next stack is x/x/x/H/H/H. The initial reaction would be to play the three hearts onto the single heart on an otherwise empty stack, and close the stack. But this is overcommiting: it nets us nothing, but permanently removes a spot on the board. The right move here is to play the single heart onto the triple, thereby leaving an empty stack, an *only close the heart stack when you need the card under it.*

Whenever you're planning a move, you need to look at the cards under your move and figure out where they're going. Trace the movement as far as you can: if I close this Heart stack then I can move the 6 and then the 8, which will leave an empty column. Perfect! But, maybe you get to "I can move the 6 and then the 8, but then there's a diamond under there I can't do anything with." Don't make that move, because you'll leave yourself in a disadvantageous position: even though you've stacked 2 cards and closed the hearts, now you've replaced your empty stack with a 1-card stack and you're stuck.

Thanks! :) This is very helpful.

[swim]

Wow I actually won my 2nd game after reading your advice!

[Handsome Squidward]

I'm bad at solitaire but one thing I discovered about Proletariat is to delay collapsing the face cards as long as possible and keep them in stacks of greater than 4 if possible. Like if the initial deal gives you diamond diamond chevron, then keep stacking chevrons on top. Now you have a stack of 6 face cards which is more space efficient than a collapsed 4-stack. More wiggle room for sorting the numbers. Also, your first priority in general should be to open up an empty slot.