Canfield (US) or Demon (UK) is a solitaire card game with a very low probability of winning. It is an English game first called Demon Patience and described as "the best game for one pack that has yet been invented". It was popularized in the United States in the early 20th century as a result of a story that casino owner Richard A. Canfield had turned it into a gambling game, although it may actually have been Klondike and not Demon that was played at his casino. It is closely related to Klondike, and is one of the most popular games of its type.
History
The game is first recorded in 1891 in England by Mary Whitmore Jones as Demon Patience. She describes it as "by far the best game for one pack that has yet been invented," and goes on to say that its "very uncomplimentary name" seems to derive from its ability to frustrate. "Truly a mocking spirit appears to preside over the game, and snatches success from the player often at the last moment, when it seems just within his grasp." Nevertheless, when the player does succeed in getting the patience out, "it is a triumph to have conquered the demon."
In Henrietta Stannard's 1895 novel, A Magnificent Young Man, Mrs. Bladenbrook invites the curate to "show me this wonderful new game of yours". He fails to get it out declaring, "Ah, it is no use." Mrs. Bladenbrook asks, "But you are nearly done?" "But I am not quite done," replies the curate, "that is where the demon comes in. It is well called 'Demon Patience'. I have often tried a dozen times to do it, and failed each time when it has seemed just within my grasp. Believe me... it is the one form of Patience which puts all the others into the shade; it is the one form of which one never tires; it is always interesting, always fresh, always tantalizing."
A 1910 publication of Fry's Magazine edited by C.B. Fry confirms that the game is called Demon patience "because the player is so often beaten by the awkward position of a single card which avoids any appearance at the critical period in a perverse manner which at times is quite demoniacal."
Meanwhile, Demon had traveled to America, where the earliest description of it, published in the 1907 Hoyle's Games, confusingly calls it Klondike, actually the name of a quite different game. The author of Hoyle's Games acknowledges that there are several ways of playing the game but only describes what he speculates is "probably the original form". However, it is merely a gambling version of Demon in which "the banker sells a pack of 52 cards for $52, and... agrees to pay $5 for every card the player gets down in the 'top line'".
How Demon came to be called Canfield in the US is unclear, but it is frequently linked to noted gambler Richard A. Canfield, who, in 1894, took over the Clubhouse in Saratoga Springs, New York. Some time after 1900, he encouraged gamblers to "buy" a deck of cards. Some sources say the cost was $50, Others say it was $52. The gambler would then play a game of solitaire and earn $5 for every card they managed to place into the foundations; if a player was fortunate enough to place all 52 cards into the foundations, the player would win $2,600. On average players made a loss of about five to six cards per game. Canfield offered it as a novelty but it never really took off. The main reasons were the fact that a single game duration took longer than an average casino game and for every gambler playing a game Canfield needed to hire a croupier. In 1907, Canfield sold the casino to the City of Saratoga Springs "at quite a loss".
Sources differ over precisely which game Canfield actually used. He himself called the game "Klondike", but some of the earliest known rules for Klondike go under the name of Canfield.