To "Cheat"... Perhaps to Win

I have played at least 9000 games of Microsoft's Freecell on this machine since I loaded it with Windows 7. Of those 9000, I have won 8999. Now, granted, I have also aborted games when I was stumped so the numbers are a bit misleading. But only a bit. And I have reversed moves in order to apply a different strategy. How does this distort the numbers? Because games aborted (if one "backs up" the game to the beginning with Ctrl-Z) do not factor in to the stats. And, often, the new strategy is effective and I win the game.

Is that cheating? I am unsure. In the purest sense, it is. But, if a means to avoid a loss is provided by the game, then is it cheating or taking advantage of the rules?  No one ever, including my mother who turned me on to solitaire when I was a mere child, said it was illegal to undo a play or series of plays, which she did and taught me to do. And, searching the web for rules for solitaire, I can find no mention of reversing moves at all. And Microsoft permits it which means, to me, that it is legal to do so.

Let me use golf as an analogy. I do this for two reasons: I love golf and golf has rules which can work against you or help you.

In golf, the rule is to "play the ball as it lies." Except where you do not have to: casual water, cart paths, ground under repair, and so on. In other words, there are exceptions to the rules to make the game fair. Sometimes, these exceptions afford you an advantage. Let me give you an example:

My ball lay close to a cement cart path. Very close. Up against it, in fact. And the rules give me the option to move the ball based on the "nearest point of relief" if the cart path will affect my stance or swing. In the example, I was also about ten feet short of a tree that was in my line to the green. I would not get relief, under the rules, for the tree. However, the nearest point of relief from the cart path also gave me sufficient relief from the tree. So, when I dropped the ball legally as relief from the cart path, I also got relief from the tree in my line. Perfectly legal. I followed the rules, I was legal. I still got a bogey, as I recall, but that had more to do with my skill level than anything else.

Since there is no rule against reversing moves (so far as I have been able to determine), I am free to take advantage of this strategy. If I back up all the way to the beginning, all I am doing is "resetting" the game. Sometimes, I do this to start over because a move I made early on in the game caused me to arrive at an unwinnable point but usually I just back up to a point where I see a move I feel I should have made (let's call it "correcting an error").

Morally, and (as I said earlier) in the purest sense, this can be construed as cheating. Still, I like what this has done to my game stats and I can overlook it without taxing my conscience.

It's like telling your wife that those pants don't make her look fat.