Spider Solitaire clears ten columns by assembling a king-to-ace run in one suit, then lifting the whole run off the table. Play Spider Solitaire free in your browser — no download, no account.
How You WinAssemble eight runs from king down to ace in one suit. Each completed run leaves the table immediately, and the deal is won when all eight are gone.
- Layout
- 10 columns · 54 cards dealt · 50 in stock
- Decks
- 104 cards · one, two or four suits
Spider Solitaire Setup: Ten Columns, Stock and Eight Foundations
- Tableau: ten columns holding fifty-four cards — the first four columns get six cards each and the last six get five. Only the last card of each column starts face up.
- Stock: the remaining fifty cards, face down. Each deal lays one face-up card on every column, so the stock is spent in exactly five deals.
- Foundations: eight piles, one for each completed king-to-ace run. Two decks make eight runs, and clearing all eight wins the game.
- There is no waste pile and no free cell. Everything happens in the ten columns, which is why an empty column is the scarcest thing on the table.
Complete Rules
- Two decks are dealt into ten columns — four of six cards and six of five — with only the last card of each column face up. The remaining fifty cards form the stock.
- Any card may be placed on a card one rank higher, regardless of suit. Colour is irrelevant here, unlike Klondike.
- Only a descending run in a single suit moves as a unit. A mixed descending stack is legal to build and legal to sit on, but its cards must be moved one at a time.
- An empty column accepts any card or any movable suited run, not only a king. Spider is more generous than Klondike in this one respect.
- The stock deals ten cards at once, one face up onto every column, and it will not do so while any column stands empty. Five deals spend it completely.
- A complete king-to-ace run in one suit is removed from the table as soon as it forms. Once removed, it never comes back.
- The deal is won when all eight runs have been removed, and lost when the stock is empty and no legal move remains.
- Aces are the floor of every run: nothing stacks on an ace, so an ace stranded on top of face-down cards is a genuine blockage.
Spider Solitaire Variants: One, Two and Four Suits
- 1 Suit deals eight identical copies of one suit, so every descending stack is automatically a suited run and anything you build can move. This is the version to learn on.
- 2 Suits uses four copies each of two suits. Half your stacks travel and half do not, which is where the real Spider decision — build now or build clean — first appears.
- 4 Suits is two ordinary packs and is among the hardest games on this site. Published win rates from large public samples run about 52% at one suit, 17% at two and 6% at four.
- All three deal 104 cards into the same ten columns, so the layout never changes. Only the deck changes, which is unusual: most games get harder by adding rules, and Spider gets harder by removing coincidences.
Your First Game
- Start with one suit. It teaches the shape of the game — digging, ordering, when to deal — without the constant frustration of stacks that will not move.
- Prefer moves that expose a face-down card. Everything else is rearrangement, and rearrangement without new information rarely changes what is possible.
- Build within a suit whenever you have the choice, even when an off-suit move looks tidier. A same-suit stack is a stack you can still move later.
- Before dealing from the stock, get every column into the best shape you can. The deal drops a card on every column at once and will happily bury your best run.
- Empty columns are the most valuable thing on the table. Use one to unpack a mixed stack, then try to give it back before you deal.
Practical Strategy
- Work toward one long suited run rather than several short ones. Length is what makes a column mobile, and a nine-card suited run can relocate an entire subplot in one move.
- When you must place off suit, place onto the suit you have the most spare copies of. That way the eventual unpick has somewhere to go.
- Count what is still buried. With two decks there are eight of every rank, so a rank you have seen seven of is nearly exhausted and planning around the eighth is wishful.
- Deal from the stock when your columns are ordered, not when you are stuck. A deal made in desperation lands ten arbitrary cards on ten already-bad columns.
- In four-suit play, accept that most deals will not be won and optimise for how far you get. Removing three or four runs from a four-suit deal is a strong result, not a failure.
Winning and Special Rules
- The three suit counts are genuinely different card sets rather than one deck filtered. All three total 104 cards, so the deal shape is identical and only the difficulty moves.
- A completed king-to-ace run leaves the table by itself the moment it forms. You never carry it anywhere, and it can never come back — which is why a run half-built in the wrong suit is worse than no run at all.
- An ace is the floor of every run and accepts no card on top of it. One sitting over face-down cards is a genuine blockage rather than an inconvenience: it will not move until its whole run is ready to leave.
- Spider is the one game here with no established third-party solver, so there is no way to build a verified deal library for it. Deals are dealt at random and labelled as such — filtering with a weak solver would quietly bias them toward the easy ones, which is worse than not filtering.
- Under this table's standard rule, an empty column cannot be banked across a deal — the stock will not hand out a new row until every column has something in it. Some apps separately offer an unrestricted-deal option.
Common Mistakes
- Building long off-suit stacks because they look orderly. A neat mixed stack of eight cards is eight separate moves waiting to happen, and usually it is simply frozen.
- Dealing from the stock to escape a stuck position. The new row rarely rescues you and permanently removes ten cards' worth of future flexibility.
- Filling an empty column with a single high card out of habit. The column is worth more empty until you know exactly what you want to unpack into it.
- Chasing a fifth or sixth run in four-suit play while the tableau collapses. Consolidating what you have is usually worth more than one more speculative dig.
- Assuming an ace can be tucked somewhere out of the way. It has no legal home except the end of its own run, so an ace above face-down cards simply blocks them until that run is ready.
How Difficult Is Spider Solitaire?
The suit count is the difficulty, and the jumps are large. One-suit Spider is winnable by most players most of the time; two-suit is a genuine game; four-suit is one of the hardest things on this site and is lost far more often than it is won, even by strong players.
The reason is narrow. Stacking ignores suit, so you can always keep playing — and every off-suit placement you make is a stack that cannot travel. Difficulty rises not because legal moves become scarce but because useful ones do.
Unlike Klondike, Pyramid, FreeCell and TriPeaks, we do not know what share of Spider deals are winnable, and neither does anyone else with a number worth quoting. There is no established Spider solver, and settling a deal costs far more search than the four games we do verify.
So Spider here is dealt honestly at random and labelled as such. If you want a game where a loss is definitely your fault, play FreeCell or standard Klondike; if you want a game that will occasionally beat you no matter what, four-suit Spider is exactly that.
Spider Solitaire FAQ
What is the difference between one-suit, two-suit and four-suit Spider?
The rules are identical; only the deck changes. One suit uses eight copies of a single suit, two suits use four copies of each of two, and four suits is two ordinary packs. Because stacking ignores suit but moving does not, adding suits multiplies how often a stack you have built refuses to travel.
Why will the game not deal from the stock?
Under the standard rule, Spider refuses to deal while any column is empty. Some apps offer an optional unrestricted-deal setting, but this table uses the standard rule; an empty column is a resource to spend deliberately rather than a free win.
Are Spider deals guaranteed to be winnable here?
No, and the table says so on every deal. Proving a Spider deal is far more expensive than proving Klondike or Pyramid, so we deal honestly random games rather than quietly biasing the distribution toward the easy ones.
Can I move a mixed stack?
Only if the cards involved form a descending run in the same suit. A red nine sitting on a black ten is a legal stack, but the ten cannot carry the nine with it.
What is the history of Spider Solitaire?
The name is usually explained by the eight foundation piles standing in for a spider's eight legs. A game called Spider is described in Games Digest in 1937, already as something readers would know, and the modern form is generally dated to 1949. It reached a mass audience when Microsoft bundled it with Windows in 1998.
How many cards does the stock hold?
Fifty. It deals ten at a time, one face-up card onto every column, which gives exactly five deals across a game.