Since I travel by commuter train to the city everyday, I often find myself amazed when I see people lug the largest of notebooks around only to play a game of solitaire. You have to think why they need that immense processing power of a Pentium 4, DVD writers, 17” 16:9 widescreen LCDs and hundreds of gigs to run the default Solitaire that has barely changed since Windows still had a decimal version number (3.11). But hey, I’m not one to complain about their foolishness. You don’t have to be foolish if you have an itch for Solitaire when you play Jamdat’s Hoyle Solitaire.

Getting the Hoyle name, which traditionally has been attached to Sierra in gaming, will go great lengths to legitimize this Solitaire offering. Hoyle Solitaire comes in five flavors: Klondike, FreeCell, Beleaguered Castle, Yukon and Scorpion. Help files are included to describe the concept and premise of each game type. In addition to this aid, the cards visibly marked and the color schemes make it easy to read on any size cell phone screen.

This following situation might have happened to you once. You’re playing Solitaire. You organize all your cards such that you need this one card from the pile before you can proceed to the next step of your grand plans to finish the game in one fell swoop. You go through the deck of cards. Then more cards. Then even more cards. Then you get to the last card and you finally find the one you want. Yeah, I hate it when that happens too. Hoyle Solitaire’s adjustable difficulty setting should help perfectionists like myself save their sanity.

Hoyle Solitaire can be called a complete package for Solitaire. But I wonder if Jamdat couldn’t spend a little more time to include other popular titles like Euchre, Spades or Hearts to spice up the offering here. Previous Hoyle titles have always had card bundles and this might present a better value to gamers. But there’s no arguing about the popularity of Solitaire. It’s easily the one that will reach the greatest audience. I even heard a recent scientific study advocate the use of Solitaire on an office worker’s PC as a therapeutic way to reduce stress, improve productivity and concentration. With this edition on your phone, you won’t have to worry about your boss looking over your shoulder at your questionable work ethics. And if you’re on the go a lot like me, you won’t have to lug around a seven pound notebook plus all the accessories to get Sol.exe running.