Solitaire may be a simple game, but that doesn't make it any less profound. The player is dealt a hand and is asked to make the best of it. A more perfect analogy for life cannot be found. The player's knowledge of the hand is limited, and time is short, so a player must make quick decisions. In general, the hand is stacked against him. Again, just like life, without any of the painful consequences involved in real life choices.

Played Vegas-style, Solitaire is a form of gambling in which no money is lost, conferring the lessons of risk and reward without blowing one's life savings in the process. How much sacrifice does one need to create a winning hand, and at what point is sacrifice counterproductive? In the long run, is it better to go for small gains, or to risk it all in hopes of a big payoff? Some hands are impossible to score a point on, others are aligned so that anyone can win, so one can ponder the vagaries of chance in life and wonder what percentage of free will we actually have to make meaningful choices. 1%? 5%? 10%? Based on my Solitaire experience, it's a small number, and yet in those few key decisions there can lie the difference between winning and losing. Being alert for opportunities, knowing when the odds are in your favor, keeping your options open, are the things one learns in Solitaire to gain an advantage, even if that advantage may only be a single extra card. Over time, however, those extra points add up, with a handy number keeping score of it all.

And yet because the hand one is dealt is by far the most important factor in success in life, should we condemn the disadvantaged, the disabled and the just plain unlucky, or should we help them and judge them by the more modest measure of their ability to make the best out of a difficult situation? Public policy is formed around such questions. How responsible is the underclass for their fate? How much do we need to invest in the future? How much can we tax people without destroying our economic base? A winning strategy in Solitaire captures all the cards, high and low, and all the suits, red and black, just like a winning strategy in public policy benefits all classes and races.

In fact, I'm willing to suggest that an understanding of Solitaire will lead to a greater understanding of life itself, in the form of DNA. In Solitaire, sequencing is all, with two sets of black cards and red cards irrevocably linked, alternating back and forth in rows like a chain of DNA, with its two base pairs of molecules joined at the hip. The language of DNA is contained in its sequencing. I suggest that understanding why some hands in Solitaire lend themselves to such fluid sequencing will lead to a greater understanding of why some sequences in DNA work and others founder. Preposterous? Perhaps. But much of what we know about probability was originally discovered by mathematically inclined card players looking for a gambling edge. Who's to say that one day, some geek sitting for hours in front of his computer screen playing Solitaire will not become obsessed with its sequencing dynamics and stumble across a principle that unlocks the secrets to our genetic code?

So next time someone says that you are wasting time playing computer Solitaire, simply tell him that you are delving into the mysteries of existence.

Wow. Got a book coming out? I'm just happy that I'm not the only one who spends such a massive amount of time playing Spider.

I would have had a book out were I not spending so much time delving into the mysteries of existence.