Celebrating National Solitaire Day on May 22

This post has been republished via RSS; it originally appeared at: Xbox Wire.

Solitaire is the classic card game that has been played for hundreds of years, but it wasn’t until 1990 when Microsoft included it in Windows 3.0 that the game truly went viral. Microsoft Solitaire successfully helped teach computer users how to use a mouse and, in the process, ended up becoming one of the most played video games in history.

Over the past 28 years, Microsoft Solitaire has been providing great entertainment to hundreds of millions of players in every corner of the world, and we’re happy to announce that May 22 of each calendar year will officially be designated as National Solitaire Day, recognizing the day Microsoft first included Microsoft Solitaire in Windows.

In 2012, Microsoft evolved the game into the Microsoft Solitaire Collection, which features five of the top Solitaire games in one app. Since then, the game has been played by over 242 million people and has become so popular that each year 33 billion games are played with over 3.2 trillion cards dealt!

Microsoft Solitaire Collection is available as a free download from the Windows, iPhone, and Android App stores.

Here is a fun video from the Microsoft Casual Games Team celebrating the first annual National Solitaire Day on May 22, 2018.

How to Observe

There’s no need to be particularly productive today on National Solitaire Day — just play some Solitaire! Either on a computer, laptop, tablet, phone, or “go retro” and play using real cards. And use #NationalSolitaireDay to post on social media to share in the fun of this classic card game.