Aces Up Solitaire HD - Play idiot's delight and firing squad free

I violated my own first rule of the App Store — don’t download something that hasn’t been updated in the past 2 years… let alone 7!!!! Crashes without opening 9 times out of 10, and when it does load is unpredictably flaky — blank gray screen, often won’t allow swipe up to close, even got a pop-up keyboard while scrolling through the play instructions! And the 4- & 5-star reviews early on are surely written by the same person or the dev’s BFFs.

I rarely ever write reviews, but I felt like I must in this instance. Aces Up is about half luck, half strategy. Cards are dealt to four columns. If two or more cards have the same suit, discard all but the highest ranked card of that suit. If multiple cards are removed, this creates an empty space or column. The strategy comes in by deciding which cards to move to empty spaces. This is done by evaluating the suit and rank of the cards in the columns. Since only the bottom card of each column is visible, this is impossible. I have never seen this before. In other apps of all card games, not just Aces Up, columns are displayed in an accordion or fan fashion, revealing the top portion of each card with the suit and number/letter(for face cards or Ace) clearly indicated. Without this information, there is no way to know which cards are underneath the last card dealt, if any, unless you have an amazing memory. I had to keep moving the last card slightly to the side, allowing me to see only the one immediately underneath, not any of the others. Since I can’t remember every card and to which column it was dealt, I could not employ any logic to the game. Also, continually trying to “peek beneath” the cards slowed down the game which employs time as one basis for scoring. The faster the game is played, the higher the score. To win, you must eliminate all cards except the aces and without being able to determine the size of the pile with only one card visible, there’s no way to know if the game can be won. Finally, I paid to have the advertisements removed and they are NOT! Long advertisements run after almost every game which is intolerable. This app only costs $0.99, but I still feel I deserve a refund.

I paid the extra fee to eliminate the advertising yet about every 4 or 5 games I get one. Love the game hate the adverts. Need to do as advertised and stop the adverts when the money is paid.