Solitaire turns 25, Microsoft to celebrate with global tournament

Remember Solitaire? The Windows card game your grandparents loved to play. Microsoft announced the game, a favourite of procrastinators everywhere, turned 25 on Monday.

The company is marking the anniversary with a large global tournament to find the best players. The tournament began on Monday with a competition among all Microsoft employees. 'Then starting Monday, June 5, Microsoft winners will go head-to-head with public players in a 25th Anniversary Tournament hosted within the game,' Microsoft writes.

Players will be able to compete in five variations of the game, including FreeCell, Spider, TriPeaks, Pyramid and, of course, the classic version known as 'Klondike Solitaire.'

While Windows 8 users need to download the game from the Windows Store, the card game will once again be bundled in to the operating system when Windows 10 launches later this year.

Microsoft hasn't offered many other details about the tournament, like how the players will actually compete or how winners will be determined. There also have been no annoucements on if there will be any prizes awarded to the winners — other than bragging rights.

If you want to try your hand at it, you can practice your Solitaire skills by downloading the game for free on Windows or Windows Phone. According to Microsoft, Solitaire is currently the top free Windows Store game.