Wave Motion was invented by Dave Bernazzani, the author of the solitaire collection Solitude for Windows. It's an interesting game, definitely worth trying out if you are not already familiar with it. The rules can be found in this video.
In the original version as specified by Dave Bernazzani, a group of two or more connecting cards in a reserve stack that have the same suit and are already in the correct (descending) order, may be moved together onto a tableau column. However, some sources do not include this rule, and allow moving only the topmost card from a reserve stack onto a tableau column. I ran tests both ways:
| Topmost Only? | Deals Won | Win Rate (%) |
|---|---|---|
| No | 3,648,312 | 36.483±0.03 |
| Yes | 3,525,755 | 35.258±0.03 |
It is easy enough to change the difficulty of the game, by altering the number of reserve stacks and/or tableau columns (both are normally eight). The table below shows the win rates using a variety of these reserve/tableau configurations:
| Reserve Stacks | Tableau Columns | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | ||
| 4 | 0 | 0.00 | 0.01 | 0.36 | 4.4 | 24.2 | |
| 5 | 0 | 0.00 | 0.09 | 2.0 | 16.4 | 53.5 | |
| 6 | 0 | 0.01 | 0.48 | 7.1 | 36.8 | 80.8 | |
| 7 | 0.00 | 0.04 | 1.9 | 18.1 | 62.1 | 95.3 | |
| 8 | 0.00 | 0.21 | 5.3 | 35.3 | 82.6 | 99.21 | |
| 9 | 0.01 | 0.71 | 12.7 | 56.4 | 94.2 | 99.90 | |
| 10 | 0.02 | 2.0 | 24.1 | 75.6 | 98.9 | 99.98 | |
| 11 | 0.06 | 4.5 | 38.4 | 88.4 | 99.79 | 100 | |
| 12 | 0.22 | 8.8 | 55.0 | 95.6 | 99.97 | 100 | |
| 13 | 0.60 | 17.4 | 72.8 | 98.9 | 100 | 100 | |
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Last modified December 10, 2022
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