Freecell Solitaire: A Strategy Guide For Beginners

Freecell Solitaire is a highly popular game, made famous by Microsoft. Freecell is included in Windows, and is considered a classic solitaire game by many. Because you can see ALL the cards right from the start, there is no luck involved, making Freecell one of the few solitaire games which is based totally on the player's skill.

Freecell is quite a hard game, but despite that, all deals (except for deal number
11982) are solvable in the 32000 deals in Microsoft's version.

USING FREECELLS WISELY

The key to finishing Freecell is judicious use of the freecells. They should be used as
temporary storage- only storing cards in them for a short time to help you move
longer sequences around.

For example, suppose you had a column with the following (taken from deal 14396)

5 Hearts
Ace Spades
Ace Hearts
4 Clubs

In this situation, it is okay to move the 4 of Clubs to a freecell, because we know
that right after that, we can move the two Aces to the foundation, and then move
the 4 of Clubs back from the freecell onto the 5 of Hearts. See how the freecell was
only used temporarily?

SAFE MOVES

There are certain moves you can make at any time in Freecell and know it wont
"trap" you later on in the game. You can move the Aces (and the twos when they can
be played), at any time, as no other cards depend on them. For the other cards, you
can safely move them to the foundation if the cards one less in rank, of the opposite
color, are already in the foundation. For example, you can safely move the 5 of
Diamonds, if the black 4s have already been moved to the foundation.

Better Freecell games will automatically do these safe moves for your, so you can
concentrate on the moves that matter, rather than having to manually make
inconsequential moves.

THE NEED TO EMPTY COLUMNS

Your first goal in Freecell is to empty a column.

Why is this?

Because an empty column allows you to move longer sequences around. The size of
the sequence you can move in Freecell is based on the number of available freecells
and empty columns. The more empty freecells and columns you have, the longer the
sequence is that you can move.

The formula for how many cards you can move is:
(number of empty freecells + 1) * 2 ^ (num empty columns)

For the less mathematically inclined, here is a table showing how many cards you
can move in some different scenarios...

Empty Freecells Empty Columns Card Sequence Length
0 0 1
1 0 2
2 0 3
3 0 4
0 1 2
1 1 4
2 1 6
3 1 8
0 2 4
1 2 8
2 2 12
3 2 16

As you can see, empty columns are particularly valuable, as they allow you to move
considerably longer sequences. By the time you have two columns free (particulaly
with two or more freecells free), you can move very long sequences, and the game is
usually quite easy to complete from there.

HOW TO EMPTY COLUMNS

So what is the easiest way to empty a column?

Start by emptying columns that don't have any Kings in them. A column with a king
can't be emptied initially, because there is nowhere for the King to go.

Don't just make moves because you can. Have some mini plan in mind, and only
move cards if they help empty the column you are aiming for.

Another popular strategy is just to go straight for releasing the Aces, and then the
2's, etc. This strategy is easier, and requires less thought. It will work for the easier
games, but won't help on the hard deals (such as deal 1941)

The most important strategy of all though, is to try and keep the freecells empty. If
you can do that, and empty a couple of columns as well, then you should find it very
easy to finish the game.

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Facebook Marketing Strategy - How to Use Facebook For Business

We've all heard the buzz about Facebook and if you've been around for a while you'll have heard how easy and how essential it is to have a social media marketing strategy for your company. After all, with over 300 million users on Facebook it must be easy to find a handful of customers almost each and every day, right? Wrong.

It's far from simple and you only have to speak to a few different people who have tried to build a successful marketing strategy on Facebook and you'll realise that the vast majority of marketers pushing their products on the Facebook platform are making few if any sales from their ever increasing activity. Why is this? In short, no clear marketing strategy. This article will provide you with the knowledge to develop a simple yet effective marketing strategy for Facebook. Here goes;

1. Branding

Know who you are, who you are not and where you are going with your business in the next five years (or at least where you plan to go) before starting out on Facebook. This will allow you to create a strong brand which tells your potential customers and business partners exactly who they are dealing with.

2. Networking

Decide on a plan to network in specific areas. Draw up a list of groups in your niche that you can find quickly each time you go onto Facebook in order to add value, comment on and share content and information within the group discussion board and network with other group members to build relationships and exchange ideas.

Find a few business pages of leaders within your industry and become a fan of the page. By doing this you will be able to see exactly what your competitors are up to on Facebook and also who else is a fan of your business rivals. In addition, you can also comment on updates made by the fan page administrator which will be seen by everyone who follows the page, offering you free advertising in the process.

Add relevant contacts to your list by carrying out a quick search of the Facebook platform to see what type of people are out there talking about your industry. This is really simple to do but very powerful; simply type in your chosen keyword or search term into the search tab at the top right hand side of your Facebook profile page, hit the search symbol and then work your way through the results column on the left hand side of the page,, providing you with search results from a range of different sources across the Facebook platform.

3. Sales

The final frontier in many ways and an increasingly difficult place to arrive at when using social networking sites to build your business but if you get this part right it can pay off big style. As the saying goes, if you don't ask, you don't get and Facebook marketing is no different. The best way to make a sale is to plan for it and with a little modification to your user profile you can set up a unique opt-in form on your profile page to offer people the chance to subscribe to more information from you about your product or service. If you want to go one better, then why not set up a Facebook page for your business and add a shopping cart facility to allow people to buy straight from your door, without ever having to leave the great land of Facebook?

Whatever you decide to do when marketing on Facebook for your business, remember the one rule of thumb; people don't frequent social networking sites to be sold to, so don't sell them on anything and you might be surprised how many sales you can actually make!

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