When Michael Keller discovered that All in a Row was not being played correctly, this created a need for a new name to refer to the incorrect version of the game (which has now taken on a life of its own). I suggested "Quasar", figuring that would be a good name for a variation of Black Hole, because it's been theorized that quasars contain black holes.
This game is played in a very similar manner as the game Black Hole by David Parlett, except that the layout consists of 13 columns of 4 cards each, and the player gets to choose any of the bottom 13 cards to use as the initial hole card.
Not surprisingly, my solver's results for this game are very similar to what others have previously found: it won a little over 67%. The remainder are all proven losses (there were no inconclusive results).
I decided to test Quasar with a free cell, similar to the same idea of Worm Hole, figuring that this game could benefit more from the extra help than Black Hole. I expected a high win rate, but less than Worm Hole, since Black Hole has a higher win rate than Quasar. To my surprise, it seems that Quasar with a cell has a win rate (99.96%) that is even higher than Worm Hole (99.89%)! I suspect the reason for this is because most Worm Hole losses seem to run out of moves fairly quickly (even with the cell), but in Quasar, you have a choice of 13 different initial hole cards, so one of them can usually lead somewhere (then giving the cell a good chance to do its magic).
In addition, I ran tests for Quasar with a single-use free cell, which resulted in a win rate of 82.5%.
| Free Cell | Deals Played | Games Won | Win Rate % |
|---|---|---|---|
| No | 10,000,000 | 6,708,019 | 67.1 |
| Single use | 1,000,000 | 825,003 | 82.5 |
| Unlimited use | 1,000,000 | 999,603 | 99.96 |
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Last modified December 31, 2021
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