The more marbles you can line up and make disappear, the higher your score.
When you do, those marbles disappear and you are rewarded with points. The idea is simple, line up five or more marbles of the same color. While you are busy learning the skills of the game, you can click the Hint button (under the menu bar) at any time to obtain a suggestion from the computer. You can also choose to display the hand probabilities, adjust the delay in dealing, and whether or not you take insurance on a hand.Īs anyone who has played this game can tell you, there's more to it than the luck of the draw. The configuration dialog lets you change rules and lists the differences in those rules. To change to a different set of rules, click Settings on the menu bar and select Preferences. This particular Blackjack program comes with four different sets of rules including Atlantic City, Ameristar, Vegas Downtown, and Vegas Strip. That's where all the action takes place.Īlong the top of the game table, it identifies the game rules as Vegas Strip, the default. When the game starts, you find yourself looking at a casino-like table with your cash chips at the bottom and the cards dealt to the right of center (see Figure 19-3). Face cards are worth 10, and Aces can count as either 1 or 11. Over 21 is a bust and you automatically lose.
Your job is to get as close to 21 without going over, and getting a higher number than the dealer. The dealer, your computer in this case, deals cards for you and itself. Here's the short version, in case you are among those who have never heard of the game. What does one say to explain a game like Blackjack? After all, it is a classic that almost everyone (over a certain age) has played. , while a progress bar informs you of this process. You see a message, Computing Basic Strategy. The program is busy setting things up for you. When you play the game for the first time, you may find that it takes a few seconds to get started. It's also far more addictive than it looks. One, or both, can be human players, but if you want to play against the computer, select a skill level from either the light or the dark side.Īs with a number of these seemingly simple games, there is far more to it than you might initially think. Under the Players tab, you see an entry for the light player and one for the dark. If your piece lands next to your opponent's piece, or pieces, all of those pieces adjacent to your piece flip and change to your color (see Figure 19-2).Īre the games starting to feel too easy for you? Click Settings on the menu bar and select Preferences to bring up a two-tabbed configuration dialog. Click one further away and your current piece jumps to that position, hopping over (but not capturing) other pieces in the process. Click a square right next to one of your pieces and a new piece appears. When you click one of your pieces, your valid moves are highlighted by a light-colored piece around your own.
When the game starts, there are four pieces on the board, two light and two dark, sitting at opposing corners. Still, Ataxx is no Othello, and it requires substantially more cunning to win. In all cases, pressing switches to and from full-screen mode.Ītaxx feels familiar, perhaps because these games, where the object is to conquer opposing pieces and change them to your colors, are so common. I only mention it with AisleRiot, but a number of the games included with Ubuntu also come with a full-screen mode. You can also click View on the menu bar and select Fullscreen (or press ) to hide away any other work that might be nagging you in the background. The card table and cards scale accordingly. If the cards look too small for your taste, just grab a corner of the main window and drag. AisleRiot, the classic solitaire game, and more. Some eighty different games are included (click the Select Game button just below the menu bar), including such favorites as Golf, Clock, Baker's Dozen, and many others.įigure 19-1. There are, in fact, many solitaire or patience card games the most famous and popular is also known as Klondike.ĪisleRiot (command name sol) is more than just Klondike solitaire (see Figure 19-1). You may also know it as patience (as I did, growing up). AisleRiot SolitaireĪlmost anyone who has held a deck of cards knows about solitaire, a one-person card game whose object is to reorder seven piles of cards, drawn at random, into four ordered piles, by suit and in numerical order. In each case, I also give you the command name so that you can either run them from the shell or start them with your program launcher. You can find most of these under Games in your top panel's Application menu.