Solitaire collection events cheating

I have always known that there are two segments, as most the major commenters. The group of 100 you play with at the time you are playing and the final leaderboard group of 100.  Your words say the same as mine, Roberts, Mary's, as these complaints have been  going on since 2015.  

1. we believe that the individual game creators have created the bots and sell them 
2. I believe that it does nothing for me to look at the answers in the back of the crossword puzzle book to fill in the pages.    It would only be cheating myself.
3. Just play your best honest game

KateVance

You are essentially correct in your response.  Two clarifications:

1.  A group consists of 100 people, not 50.  For some reason, the people at the bottom of the list often have 0 points.  There were 4 with 0 points tonight in my group of 100.  I suspect that represents people who click on the challenge to see what it was, and then decide not to play it.

2.  The total number of people playing a particular challenge typically runs around 350,000.  Not sure if everyone sees the number but the Klondike Adventure tonight had a total of 343,710 people who had played at some time since it became available, and others will add to that total until the challenge is over.  And my understanding is that it is from around the world.

......

Do not know what a ''local group board'' is but it sounds interesting.

cheers

have a great weekend

terry

The "local group board" is the "group" you are playing against. I believe it comprises 50 people who all started playing at the same time. When you check the leader boards at the end of the game, there are 3 tabs at the top: 

Group

Friends

Top 100

If you "friend" a player, you can always check your times against them to see how you are faring. If you don't, then you can check your "group" - which gives you the most accurate gage of your score, challenge by challenge. 

The "Top 100" is not, as Daniel assumes, "national", it's international. This is the top 100 of anyone with a Windows based computer, anywhere in the world, playing the challenge. It could be a few million people, or more. It's the unique designation of the top 100 people in the world, playing that one challenge. 

While I also suspect bots or cheats, truthfully, there are people on planet earth with unbelievable pattern recognition skills. These types of games are fantastic training for that particular skill. So it is possible that some, or even all of the world's top 100 are not cheating. 

Either way, I don't pay attention to the that group, because I'm not competing on that level. I check my scores against the local group (those who started at the same time as me), and, after much practise and patience, I've captured top positions regularly. Not all the time though - there are puzzles I just can't do and days I'm a bit slower than usual. But it is fun to challenge myself - and that should be the goal.

Hi Daniel,

Wish I understood all the ramifications of playing such a simple game.

I have played the events for a while and have had some good times/results, and have been proud of what i  achieved.

Before the ''2 computers/bots'' problem I had good scores and enjoyed playing against the board.

Now I just try to complete the games and know that whatever my time is, the cheats will always win, so no rush, just enjoy.

The cheats must be sad people.

I did have a look at youtube's

Microsoft Solitaire Collection Cheat Table

th guy presenting  it looks, sounds and probably smells like a nerd, I wonder if he ever gets out of his bedroom.

Do not know what a ''local group board'' is but it sounds interesting.

cheers

have a great weekend

terry

Some confusion from the commenters here mixing up their Group board with the Top 100 board.  Today's contest, Klondike Adventure, has JoanPesh and PaltryAmoeba564 at the top of the top 100 with times of 16 and 20 minutes. On my local group board, the current leader took 40 minutes. I finished in 61 minutes. That put me in 7th place, but on the group list, not the Top 100 list. 

Can I believe someone else is good enough to do all 20 challenges in 40 minutes without cheating?  Yes.  But 16 minutes? No. If I used two accounts...the first to determine how to win each game and the second to just click through the answers I already had determined from the first play...I would still have a very hard time finishing in less than 30 minutes. 

That said, it's hard to believe anyone is going through that much trouble day after day to play the game, record the best moves, then play a second time.  More likely they are using bots or some other automatic way of cheating. Of course, if all you want is to make the top 3 for your group board, then you don't need to cheat as much. Play once, figure out the more difficult games, then play a second time and win within your group. Making the top 100 nationally is going to take more work...or better bots.