Cruel Solitaire is an unusual solitaire game, that many people think has a low success rate. Careful planning will allow the advanced solitaire player to win more than 50% of the games they play though.
The trick to winning cruel solitaire is to know when to deal from the talon. When you first start playing cruel solitaire, it seems like dealing from the talon randomly shuffles the cards, but this is not the case. A deal from the talon just redeals the cards in the same order they currently appear.
This allows an advanced player to have some knowledge of what will happen when the talon deal is done… which vastly improves the chances of winning every game of cruel solitaire that you play.
There are certain easy-to-learn patterns that help with this.
If all the stacks to the left of a stack have 4 cards in them before the redeal, then after the redeal, the card that is on top will stay on top.
For example, suppose the first 3 stacks appear like this:
Stack-A: 4 Cards
Stack-B: 4 Cards
Stack-C: 5 Cards with a 5 of Diamonds on top.
All the stacks before Stack-C have 4 cards in them, so after a redeal, the 5 of...