Remember the feeling of exhilaration when a giant pile of of cards burst on your screen after you successfully completing a game of Solitaire? Although it appears completely innocuous, Solitaire is quite an absorbing game. It gets holds of a player’s attention to such an extent that it has been labelled as most people’s favorite time-waster. How can it not be? 7,000 trillion possible games. Anything can happen. Chaos can reign or order depending on your play.

Playing Solitaire with real cards is history now. Microsoft was one of the pioneers of making Solitaire accessible to the tech-savvy community. According to microsoft, Solitaire is the most used software among windows users. Along with Minesweeper, Solitaire has been the most crucial computing program till date. Although the market is inundated with fancy 3D games and the more recent virtual reality games, a good old game of Solitaire can never go out of trend. It one of those classic things that are ageless and always find their own following.

On the eve of Solitaire’s 25th anniversary, in June 2015, Microsoft conducted a worldwide Solitaire tournament. Microsoft put forth a challenge to the fans of the game to play against the software company’s strongest players. Solitaire has been a permanent part of Windows since its inception. With Microsoft’s wide reach across computer users all over the world, it is apparent that the game’s popularity is unbeatable. The tournament started with internal challenges between Microsoft employees. The winners of these internal challenges were then pitted against the general public. In its official announcement of the tournament, Microsoft roused players by saying, in quintessential Windows-style that is minimalistic and functional at its best, “you’ll be challenged to bring your best to defeat our best.”

In recent years, loads of different versions of Solitaire has cropped up. These games can be played online or through various apps. Quite a lot of people are not aware, although almost everyone has played it, the most common form of Solitaire is the Klondike Solitaire. Other commons Solitaire games are Freecell and Spider Solitaire. Each of these categories are their own sub-categories. There are perhaps 40 variations of this game! With so many options and games to master, a Solitaire fan has no reasons to complain.