Tim's Projects
Poker Patience

A couple of days ago I was looking through The Popular Dictionary of Card Games, and this 'Poker crossed with Patience' game caught my eye.

You may know that I have already written a version of the classic Patience game for the Amstrad NC100 and NC200 computers (see www.ncus.org.uk), so I thought I would have a go at writing this one.

But what language to write it in? I could have used the NC200's BBC Basic, or made it an on-line game using Internet Explorer and VB Script, but I decided to use proper Visual Basic since I needed to learn it for my MECControl project.

I wrote this program over two days, and the biggest challenge was creating the logic required to decide which Poker combinations the user had made. The source code is included in the full installation for those who are interested.

Download Poker Patience

Version 1.3 for Microsoft Windows 98 - XP

The Poker Patience playing area

The setup program copies VB runtime files to your Windows folder (full installation only), creates a Poker Patience folder in your Program Files folder, creates a Pack sub-folder that contains the card images, creates a Source sub-folder that contains the program source code (full installation only), and creates an entry in your Start menu.

Playing the Game

Twenty-five cards are turned one by one from a shuffled 52-card pack and placed face up on the table in such a way as to gradually build a square of five rows by five columns. Cards once placed may not be moved in relation to one another.

At the end of play score for each row and column (ten in all) according to the Poker combination it makes, regardless of the actual order of cards within the line.

The program uses the American scoring schedule which has a target score of 200. Hold your mouse over each combination for an explanation:

Use the mouse to move the top card from the pack around the playing area. Click an empty dark grey cell adjacent to a card already placed to place the card. If you make a mistake, you can press CTRL-Z once to undo your last placement.

The right-hand side of the window displays the next card in the pack, details of any scoring combinations that were made when you last placed a card, and your current total score.

• Click Scoring for a summary of the scoring schedule and a list of the last five top scores and players.
• Click New to start a new game with a newly shuffled pack.
• Click Quit to exit the program.

Changes in this version

• The Next Card display now shows the card following the card about to be placed.
• The Scoring window will be aligned to the right of the playing area window where possible.
• Improved Scoring window layout and scoring examples.
• Improved card images and use of ClearType-capable font.

Changes in Version 1.2

• The top five scores and players are now saved.
• The Scoring window now displays the top five scores.
• The About window can now be maximized for easier reading.

References

• Parlett, D., The Popular Dictionary of Card Games, Parragon by arr. with Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-75251-849-6
• Card images adapted from those available at www.jfitz.com/cards.

Portions of this article © 1992 David Parlett.