Spider Solitaire 1 Suit — Easy Mode, Play Free
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Spider Solitaire with one suit
The goal
Assemble eight complete King-to-Ace runs. Each one vanishes from the table as it forms; clear all eight and you win.
The gift
Every card is a spade, so every descending stack you build can be picked up and moved in one piece. Nothing ever gets stranded.
The catch
44 of the 54 dealt cards start face down. Uncovering them — not just making legal moves — is what actually wins games.
The beginner's guide
Learn Spider the easy way
One-suit Spider is where nearly everyone should start. It uses the full Spider apparatus — two decks, 104 cards, ten columns, five stock deals — but deals every card as a spade, and that single change transforms the experience. You get the real game's shape and rhythm without its sharpest teeth.
This page is a complete beginner's walkthrough: why the mode is forgiving, how a typical game unfolds from first click to final run, and — most importantly — which habits to build now so that 2 suits feels like a step up rather than a wall.
Why one suit is the easy mode
In standard Spider, two rules pull against each other: you may place any card on the next rank up regardless of suit, but only same-suit sequences move together. That tension is the whole game. Put a heart on a spade and the pair is stuck — legal to build, impossible to lift.
With one suit, the tension disappears. Every card matches every other card, so every descending stack is automatically a movable run. You can reorganize the table freely, recover from most mistakes, and concentrate on the parts of Spider that have nothing to do with suits: digging out buried cards, managing empty columns, and timing your stock deals. Those skills are the permanent ones. Suit-handling comes later; table-handling starts now.
The numbers reflect the kindness. Players win roughly 62% of 1-suit games without touching undo — nearly two games in three. Compare that with about 28% at 2 suits and around 6% at 4 suits, and you can see how much difficulty the suit mix alone carries.
A full game, walked through
The opening position
The game deals 54 cards into ten columns — six cards in each of the first four columns, five in the rest — with only the top card of each column face up. The remaining 50 cards sit in the stock, waiting to arrive in five deals of ten. Your opening view is ten visible cards and a lot of hidden information.
Scan those ten cards before touching anything. You are looking for pairs that connect: a 6 that can sit on a 7, a Jack for a Queen. Count how many such moves exist. Most openings offer three to five.
The first moves
Play the connecting moves — but when two moves are available, take the one that uncovers a face-down card. This is the single most valuable instinct in all of Spider, worth repeating until it is reflex. A move that merely rearranges visible cards changes little; a move that flips a hidden card hands you new information and, very often, a follow-up move you could not have seen.
Prefer to empty the short five-card columns rather than the six-card ones when you have the choice — they are one card closer to becoming an open space. And when you move a card, aim it at the higher of two possible destinations: a run growing down from a 10 has more room ahead of it than one growing down from a 6.
The first stock deal
Sooner or later the connecting moves dry up. Before you click the stock, stop and make every remaining useful move, because the deal drops one card on all ten columns at once and buries whatever you left untidy. A card you could have freed in one move before the deal may cost four moves after it. Note also that the game refuses to deal while any column is empty — you must place something into each gap first.
The ten new cards will break some of your sequences and, in return, offer fresh connections. Take a breath and re-scan the whole table exactly as you did at the start.
The middle game and the endgame
The middle game is a loop: connect, reveal, tidy, deal. Somewhere along the way you will empty a column, and the game changes gear — an open column lets you lift a buried card out of the way, split an awkward stack, or park a King that was blocking everything beneath it. Try to keep a column open, or nearly open, going into each deal.
By the fourth or fifth deal all 104 cards are in play and long spade sequences start knitting themselves together. The moment a full King-through-Ace run forms, it flies off the table. The endgame is usually a cascade — completing one run un-buries the cards that complete the next. Eight runs, and the table is clear.
Habits to build now — they pay off later
Because 1 suit forgives almost everything, it is possible to win here with habits that will quietly ruin you at 2 suits. Practice the disciplined version of the game now, while the cost of discipline is low:
- Reveal before you rearrange. Between two legal moves, always take the one that flips a face-down card. At 1 suit this habit wins games; at higher suit counts it is the difference between playing and guessing.
- Treat empty columns as tools, not victories. An open column is a workspace — use it to dig, then re-open it. Players who learn to value open space at 1 suit arrive at 4 suits already thinking like experts.
- Never rush the stock. Exhaust every useful move before dealing. The stock is not a refresh button; every deal makes the table ten cards messier. If you take one habit from this page, take this one.
- Glance at the score. Classic scoring starts you at 500, subtracts 1 per move, and adds 100 per completed run. You do not need to chase the theoretical maximum of 1,254 — but a rising average score is proof your play is tightening.
When you lose anyway
You will lose about a third of your 1-suit games at first, and some of those losses are not your fault: a share of deals are simply arranged so badly that no line of play saves them. That share is tiny at 1 suit and grows with suit count — the solver research is genuinely interesting, and we walk through it in Is Every Spider Solitaire Game Winnable? The lesson for a beginner is about mindset: judge yourself across ten games, not one, and treat each loss as a chance to spot the deal-too-early or the reveal you skipped.
When to move up to 2 suits
Stay at 1 suit until winning feels routine — for most players that is a 70%+ win rate across ten or so games without undo. Then move up promptly. Two suits reintroduces the cross-suit tension this mode removed, and it is where Spider becomes a genuinely strategic game; you will drop to losing most games for a while, and that is exactly the point. Before you jump, skim the complete rules to firm up the edge cases, and read the strategy guide — most of it is written for the road ahead.
Beginner questions, answered
Is 1 suit Spider Solitaire too easy to be worth playing?
Not if you use it with intent. One suit removes the suit-matching problem, but it keeps everything else — the buried cards, the stock deals, the empty-column decisions. Played lazily, it is a clicking exercise. Played as training, it is the best place to build the habits that decide games at 2 suits and beyond.
How long does a game of 1 suit Spider take?
Most players finish a 1-suit game in 5 to 10 minutes once the rules feel familiar. Your first few games may run longer while you learn to read the table. It is comfortably the quickest of the three Spider modes — a full 4-suit attempt can take half an hour.
I lost a 1 suit game — did I do something wrong?
Probably, but not necessarily. About 62% of 1-suit games are won without undo, which means roughly one deal in three defeats even solid play — usually because too many key cards were buried deep and the stock deals landed badly. A single loss is noise. If you are losing more than half your 1-suit games, the usual culprit is dealing from the stock too early.
Why are all the cards spades?
In 1-suit mode the game deals 104 spades — eight copies of each rank instead of the usual two per suit. Because every card shares a suit, any descending sequence you build moves as a single unit. That is the entire source of the mode’s gentleness: no move ever freezes cards in place.
When should I move up to 2 suits?
When you are winning most of your 1-suit games without undo and the wins feel routine rather than lucky. A win rate around 70–80% over ten or so games is a good signal. Move up before it gets boring — the habits transfer best while the game still has your attention. The 2-suit page covers what changes.
Should beginners use the undo button?
Yes, freely — but use it to learn, not just to escape. When a move goes badly, undo it and ask what the table was telling you before you clicked. Each undo costs one point under classic scoring, which is a trivial price for the lesson. Weaning yourself off undo later is easy; unlearning bad instincts is not.
Why won’t the game let me deal new cards from the stock?
Every one of the ten columns must hold at least one card before the stock will deal, because each deal drops exactly one card on every column. If you have an empty column, place any card into it — even one you would rather keep free — and the deal will proceed. The rules page covers this and the other edge cases.
What is a good score for a 1 suit game?
Classic scoring starts at 500, charges 1 point per move, and pays 100 per completed run. At 1 suit, finishing above 1,100 is strong and above 1,150 is excellent. If your wins land in the 900s, you are winning with wasted moves — a sign to start planning two moves ahead instead of one.