Spider Solitaire

What you need & setup

1. Shuffle two standard 52-card decks together (104 cards, no jokers).
2. Deal ten tableau columns: the first four columns get 6 cards each, the remaining six get 5 cards each (54 cards total).
3. Turn only the top card of each column face up; the rest stay face down.
4. Place the remaining 50 cards face down as the stock.
5. Leave room to set aside completed king-to-ace suit sequences — you will need to clear eight of them to win.

Turn sequence

1. Move any face-up card onto a card one rank higher in another column — suit and color don't matter for a single card (the 7♥ can go on any 8).
2. Move groups only when they are a descending run of the same suit: 9♠-8♠-7♠ moves together, but 9♠-8♥ must be moved one card at a time.
3. When a face-down card becomes the top of its column, flip it face up.
4. Any card or same-suit run may be moved into an empty column.
5. When you run out of useful moves, deal from the stock: one new face-up card onto every column — but only if no column is empty.
6. When a full king-to-ace run in one suit forms, it is removed from the tableau automatically (or set aside).
7. Keep building until all eight suit sequences are cleared (a win) or no progress is possible.

The Tableau Layout

Spider deals 54 of its 104 cards into ten columns, with only each column's top card face up. The other 50 cards wait in the stock.

Almost everything happens in the tableau. There are no separate build-up foundations as in Klondike — completed sequences lift straight out of the columns.

Uncovering the face-down cards is your engine of progress, exactly as in Klondike.

Building Down — Any Suit

A single card may be placed on any card exactly one rank higher, regardless of suit or color. The 10♣ can sit on the J♣, J♦, J♥, or J♠.

This makes individual moves easy to find — but mixed-suit stacks are traps, because they cannot move together.

Only a descending run of the same suit moves as one block. The J♦-10♦-9♦ travels as a unit; the J♦-10♠ does not.

Empty Columns

When a column is cleared, any single card or same-suit run may be moved into it. Empty columns are the most powerful tool in the game — use them to break apart mixed-suit stacks.

You cannot deal from the stock while any column is empty; every column must hold at least one card first.

Experienced players sometimes keep a column empty as long as possible, spending it only on moves that unbury key cards.

Dealing from the Stock

When you are stuck (or choose to), deal a fresh face-up card onto all ten columns at once — ten cards per deal, five deals in total.

Each deal buries your careful arrangements under a fresh layer, so squeeze every useful move out of the current position before dealing.

There is no waste pile and no redealing: once the five stock deals are used, the cards on the table are all you have.

Completing Sequences and Winning

Whenever a column contains a complete descending run from king to ace in a single suit, that run is removed from play.

Eight such sequences exist in the 104 cards; clear all eight and you win.

You lose when no legal move helps and no stock deals remain. Four-suit Spider is genuinely hard — even strong players lose often.

Scoring & how the game ends

• Casual play tracks only win or loss.
• The common computer scoring starts at 500 points, subtracts 1 per move, and adds around 100 for each completed suit sequence.
• Many players track win percentage separately per difficulty (1-suit, 2-suit, 4-suit).

Winning: Remove all eight complete king-to-ace sequences, each in a single suit, from the tableau.

Common variations

These are genuine regional and house-rule differences — none of them is “the one true way” to play. Agree with your table before starting.

• One-suit Spider

  All 104 cards are spades, so every build is automatically same-suit and movable. The standard beginner difficulty.

  Common: The default easy mode in most software.

• Two-suit Spider

  Played with spades and hearts (four copies of each), forcing real suit management while staying learnable. The usual intermediate step.

  Common: The standard medium difficulty in software.

• Four-suit Spider

  The full classic game with all four suits — the hardest standard form, where careful planning is essential and losses are common.

  Common: The traditional form and the expert mode in software.

• Relaxed empty-column deals

  Some versions allow dealing from the stock even while a column is empty, softening one of the game's sharpest constraints.

  Common: A house rule and an option in some apps.

• Spiderette

  A single-deck Spider played on seven Klondike-style columns — the same mechanics in a shorter, smaller game.

  Common: Solitaire collections.

A little history

Spider belongs to the large family of two-deck patience games and is generally traced to the early twentieth century, its name usually explained by the eight foundation piles matching a spider's eight legs.

Computer versions with selectable one-, two-, and four-suit difficulty made it, by most accounts, one of the most-played solitaires in the world.