Recently, Papaya held the first international Solitaire championship of its kind in the world. The championship took place at the Temple House complex in Miami, and about 400 players from around the world participated, having qualified after an approximately month-long preliminary round held in the Solitaire Cash app, in which more than half a million players took part.
The finalists were flown to Miami and stayed at a five-star hotel. The large-scale event involved an investment of approximately 10 million dollars, with a central stage, dedicated gaming stations, an audience, and filming and production crews. The competition was conducted based solely on ability – speed, accuracy, strategy, and perseverance – accompanied by a technological framework to ensure fairness, including the provision of “clean” devices with a version dedicated to the event, alongside technical and frontal inspections intended to prevent fraud. The winners were awarded prizes with a total value of approximately 300 thousand dollars, and the event is expected to be broadcast on cable channels across the United States in about a month.
Beyond its scale and production, the championship reflected a prominent social-cultural phenomenon – the beloved Solitaire game, which for years was perceived as a “solitary single-player game,” became a unifying factor for an international community and a lively, vibrant meeting between people.
Papaya develops skill-based mobile games that perform smart Matchmaking between players of similar levels through algorithms, thereby enabling a fair, fast, and community-oriented competitive experience.
In the gaming applications developed by the company, including: Solitaire Cash, Bubble Cash, and 21 Cash, competitions take place in which the result is determined according to the player’s actual performance – and in the Miami tournament, the format was brought for the first time to a physical stage in a dedicated championship.
Oriel Bachar, the company’s CEO and co-founder, spoke about the championship: "For the first time in the world, we are bringing the nostalgic Solitaire game to the stage of an international championship. We created something that has never been done before – taking a game that the whole world knows and turning it into a live competition based solely on ability, with a standard of fairness, accuracy, and technology. It is a great privilege to see an international community built over time coming from all over the world to meet, compete, and prove that a ‘single-player game’ can become a human encounter that connects people."