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FIGURE 2-14: Sometimes you have to get lucky to make something out of this big mess.
After you finish playing, you can further exercise your mental agility by trying to rearrange the
cards to score as many points as possible. A rearrangement is really only worth doing, however, if
you have a straight flush so you can rack up big numbers. Using all the cards in high-scoring
combinations (flushes or higher) is a real coup.
Some people also count the long diagonals (from top right to bottom left and vice versa) in the
scoring. Planning the scores on the diagonals too carefully is pretty difficult, but it can be done —
or you can just regard any score on them as a bonus. You can also play Poker Patience as a
competitive game for two players or more. One player calls out the cards he draws at random, and
then both players try to arrange their own grids to maximize the scores. The highest score wins.