I Played Solitaire Cash For Two Days. Here's How Much I Lost

For a while there, it seemed like every ad I saw while gaming on my phone was for this game called "Solitaire Cash". Actually, to be fair, it could have been any one of a number of games, all with the same theme. "Solitaire Clash", "Solitaire Cash", "Solitaire Kingdom" — they all pitch the same thing — play Solitaire and win gobs and gobs of money.

These ads ranged from everything from people leaving bags on money in the back of a taxi to people chastising each other for playing what they called "scam games". A scam game, according to them, was any game where you didn't actively win lots of money. That point stuck with me — the concept of the scam game. Every game where you don't win money is a scam. All it does is entertain you, and keep you occupied, and pass the time waiting for your daughter to come out of Target for the fourth time that day.

I wanted to investigate this not-a-scam game. I downloaded two of them, actually. "Solitaire Clash" and "Solitaire Cash." I played both for about a day each, for reasons that will become clear, very soon. Of the two, "Solitaire Cash" is the one I focused the most on because it was the one I saw the most ads for, but it's important to understand that they all advertise the same way, and they all work the same way.

Spoiler alert: I'm still writing for SlashGear, so I did not win heaps of money, but stay tuned. In the meantime, here's how it works.

For those of you who are not familiar, Solitaire (sometimes also called "Klondike") is a card game with seven piles of cards, called "Tableau. Each pile has an increasing number of cards face down with one card face up on top of each pile. The idea is to stack the face up cards on top of each other in descending order from Kings down to Aces, alternating colors. For example, a stack could start with a red jack, followed by a black 10, followed by a red nine.

Additionally your goal is to fill four piles of face up cards (called "Foundations") that start with Aces and stack up in the same suit. Each stack will have an Ace, two, three, four or spades, and so on in the same suit. Then there's the playable cards, called the Stock. After dealing out the Tableau, the rest of the cards are drawn three at a time. Then you play the top card of each draw, followed by the next and the next onto the Tableau or the Foundations as they're playable. For example, if you draw three cards, and the top one is a two of spades, you can either place that on top of the Ace of spades in the Foundations, or on a red three in the Tableau.

The purpose of the game is to move all the cards into the Foundations. Once you place all the Kings on top, you win. If you get stuck, you lose.

Solitaire Cash has three forms of currency. There are gems, cash, and bonus cash. Gems are awarded for accomplishing small mini games, like building a village or with daily bonus. Bonus cash is exactly what it sounds like — it's extra money that the game can award you for something like those same mini games, or daily bonuses. The game also tempts you with extra bonus cash on top of whatever money you deposit. For example, if you deposit $25, maybe it'll toss you some gems and bonus cash on top of it. Bonus cash cannot be withdrawn, but it can be used toward entry fees. So that's how the money part works.

Solitaire Cash is a timed game that gives you points based on your moves. You also get a time bonus at the end of the game which increases your score. The faster you play, and the more cards you place, the higher your score. If you win, that's obviously ideal. But if you lose, lose fast. Not every deal will be a win, so it's critical to gain as many points as you can by tapping out early and getting a bigger time bonus.

Each game has an entry fee, plus prizes for what place you take based on your points. Typically, the payout for first and second place will exceed the entry fee. Sometimes third place will as well. The higher the entry fee, the bigger the payout. If you enter a game for one dollar, you'll leave with maybe, three dollars, etc. The upside is, if you don't win, you only lose one dollar.

"Solitaire Cash" is absolutely, positively one of the most annoying games I have ever played in my life. This game not only sports an unfriendly user interface, but it's peppered with popups for other mini games and side quests. For example, when you open the game, you get not one, not two, but up to seven popup ads for different deals and games you can play before you can even engage with the main user interface.

When you're selecting a game, you can see the entry fee and the prize pool, but you have to tap into the game to see what the individual payouts actually are. So, you'll see a game with a three-dollar entry fee and twelve-dollar prize pool, but you need to tap on it to see that the top prize is $6.70, second prize is $3.60, and third prize is $1.70.

Once you get into the game, it's still annoying. Moving cards around requires a deliberate tap and drag. If you want to move a column of cards, you need to tap on the top of the column to drag them all. Other Solitaire games let you move cards around just by tapping on them, which is much more accommodating to my sausage fingers. Leave me alone; I'm lazy.

My original plan was to play "Solitaire Cash" for a week or a month to see how much I won or lost. I barely lasted a day. I deposited $25 on the first day and burned my way through it by about the middle of day two. I think my biggest problem was that I wasn't fast enough at throwing in the towel. There were a few games where I lost by less than 100 points. Every time you reshuffle the deck, you lose 20 points, and there were a couple games where I would reshuffle just one more time to try to get a better hand.

Reshuffling was also necessary because I wasn't taking the time needed to really focus on what cards were coming up in the deck. I'd need to run through it again to make sure I didn't miss anything: more time, fewer points.

Am I saying that it's impossible to win money at this game? No more so than saying no one can win at the slots in Las Vegas. I am saying I can't uninstall this game fast enough. It's a money pit. At least with a normal solitaire game, I don't have to pay for the privilege of losing. If you ask me, the true scam games are this one and other ones like it.