Spider Solitaire — Play Free Online

The setup

Spider Solitaire is played with two full decks — 104 cards. The game deals 54 of them into ten tableau columns: the first four columns receive six cards each, the remaining six columns receive five. Only the top card of each column is face up. The other 50 cards wait in the stock at the top of the table, and they will arrive in five deals of ten cards — one onto each column.

Legal moves

Any face-up card can be placed on a card exactly one rank higher, regardless of suit — a Jack of Hearts may sit on a Queen of Spades. But there is a crucial asymmetry: only cards of the same suit in perfect descending sequence move together as a unit. A mixed-suit stack is legal to build but expensive to own, because you can never lift it in one piece. When you expose a face-down card, it flips face up; when you empty a column entirely, any card or movable run may be placed into the gap.

Dealing from the stock

When you run out of useful moves, click the stock to deal ten new cards, one on every column. Two things matter here. First, the game will refuse to deal while a column is empty — fill every gap first. Second, a deal buries every column one card deeper, so a tidy table before the deal is worth more than any single move after it.

Completing runs and winning

The moment a full King-through-Ace sequence of one suit is assembled anywhere on the table, it is removed automatically. There are eight such runs in the two decks; remove all eight and the game is won. There are no foundations as in Klondike — everything happens in the tableau.

Scoring

Classic scoring starts at 500 points, subtracts one per move, and awards 100 for each completed run. Fewer moves means a higher score, which is why experienced players plan several moves ahead instead of shuffling cards back and forth. The complete rules page covers edge cases — empty-column deals, undo behavior, and variant scoring — in full detail.

Spider deals two full decks across ten columns. Only the top card of each column starts face up, and the rest of the game is a slow negotiation between what you can see and what you are willing to risk. The rules take a minute to learn; the judgment takes longer.

The single most important habit is simple: prefer moves that turn a card face up. A revealed card is information, and information is the only currency this game accepts.

What is Spider Solitaire?

Spider is a two-deck patience game first recorded in the 1940s — the name comes from the eight completed suit runs you need to win, one for each of a spider's eight legs. It lived quietly in card-game anthologies for half a century until Microsoft shipped it with Windows 98's Plus! pack and then Windows XP, where it sat one click away from a billion desktops. For a generation of office workers, Spider simply was solitaire. Franklin D. Roosevelt was famously fond of it decades before it ever reached a screen.

The digital version endures for a reason the paper version never fully delivered: shuffling and dealing 104 cards by hand is tedious, but a computer resets the table instantly. Spider is arguably the first classic card game that is genuinely better on a screen.

The rules in detail

Everything above in the how-to-play guide covers the moves; what trips players up is the interaction between rules. Three points deserve emphasis:

• Placement is suit-blind, movement is suit-strict. You may drop any card on the next rank up, but you can only pick up same-suit sequences. Every off-suit placement is a small loan you will repay with interest.
• The stock refuses to deal over an empty column. Before each deal you must fill every gap. Plan what you throw into the gap — it is often the one free choice you get before ten random cards land.
• Completed runs leave immediately. You cannot keep a finished K-to-A run on the table as a workspace; the game removes it the moment it forms. Occasionally it is right to delay completing a run for exactly this reason.

The dedicated rules page walks through a full dealt example, and the glossary defines every term — tableau, stock, run, sequence — if the vocabulary is new to you.

1 suit vs 2 suits vs 4 suits

All three modes deal the same layout; the difficulty lives entirely in the suit mix. Win rates below reflect typical player performance without undo across large samples of online play — with liberal undo use, all three numbers rise substantially.

One suit teaches the rhythm: dig, reveal, consolidate, deal. Two suits introduces the central tension — every cross-suit move is convenient now and costly later. Four suits is a different game altogether, closer to a planning puzzle than a pastime; a single careless move in the first deal can quietly lose a game you won't finish for another twenty minutes. Each variant page carries a guide written for that mode specifically.

Strategy that actually works

Before every deal from the stock, tidy the table: a new row lands on all ten columns at once, and a buried mixed stack becomes ten cards deeper. Keep at least one column as clean as you can, and never deal while an obvious move is still on the table.

Same-suit runs are the only ones that move as a unit, so a mixed-suit stack is a promise you will have to unwind later. Break suits deliberately, not casually — and when in doubt, spend the move that reveals a card.

• Empty columns are engines, not trophies. An empty column lets you relocate any run, re-sort mixed stacks, and absorb a bad stock deal. Players who win at 4 suits treat creating and protecting an empty column as the primary objective of the early game.
• Reveal face-down cards greedily. Each column starts with four or five hidden cards. Every reveal shrinks the unknown and often opens moves you could not see. Between two otherwise equal moves, always take the one that flips a card.
• Prefer building on high cards. A run parked on a King can grow all the way down; the same cards parked on a 5 hit the floor at the Ace. Move sequences onto higher ranks when you have the choice.
• Use undo as a periscope. There is no penalty beyond the move count. Deal, look at what arrived, undo if your version allows it — or simply try a line, observe the reveal, and re-plan. Information is worth more than a point.

The full strategy guide goes deeper: opening priorities, mid-game triage, when to break a suit on purpose, and how to play a lost position for maximum information.

The scoring system explained

The near-universal digital standard descends from Microsoft's implementation:

• You start with 500 points.
• Every move — including each undo — subtracts 1 point.
• Every completed King-to-Ace run adds 100 points.

Eight runs award 800 points, so the theoretical ceiling is 1,254 after subtracting the minimum 46 moves a perfect game requires — a number no human reaches. In practice, 1,000+ is a strong game and 1,150+ is exceptional. Because the penalty is per move, score and skill track each other closely: the player who plans three moves ahead simply spends fewer moves than the player who shuffles cards hoping something turns up.

Is every game winnable?

No — and knowing this changes how it feels to lose. Solver studies of Spider deals show that at 1 suit nearly every deal has a solution, while at 4 suits a meaningful minority of deals are unwinnable from the start, no matter how perfectly played. The practical takeaway: a loss is data, not necessarily a verdict on your play. Serious players measure themselves over dozens of games, not one. We break down the research, the role of undo, and what "winnable" even means in Is Every Spider Solitaire Game Winnable?

Spider vs Klondike vs FreeCell

The three great desktop solitaires reward different instincts. If Spider is your first, the others are worth an afternoon each — the contrast sharpens all three games.

Klondike is faster and more forgiving; FreeCell shows you every card from the first move and dares you to compute. Spider sits between them — more hidden information than FreeCell, far more planning than Klondike. The full head-to-head, including which game suits which kind of player, is in our comparison article.

Frequently asked questions