Spider Solitaire Rules

Spider Solitaire has a short rulebook and a long list of ways to misread it. This page is the complete reference: the exact deal, what moves are legal and why, how the stock behaves, how scoring works, and where the 1-suit, 2-suit, and 4-suit variants actually differ. If a term here is unfamiliar — tableau, stock, run — the glossary defines all of them.

The objective, stated precisely: assemble eight complete runs from King down to Ace, each in a single suit, anywhere in the tableau. Each completed run is removed automatically. Remove all eight and the game is won.

The deal

Spider uses two full decks — 104 cards, no jokers. The game deals 54 cards into ten tableau columns: columns one through four receive six cards each, and columns five through ten receive five cards each. Only the top card of every column is face up, which means 44 cards begin the game face down — hidden information you will spend most of the game digging out.

The remaining 50 cards form the stock, waiting at the top of the table. They will arrive in five deals of ten cards, one card onto each column, whenever you choose to deal. Once the stock is empty, the cards on the table are all the cards you will ever have.

Legal moves

Two rules govern everything, and the asymmetry between them is the heart of the game.

Placement is suit-blind. Any face-up card may be placed on any card exactly one rank higher, regardless of suit or color. A 7♥ may sit on an 8♠, an 8♥, or an 8♦ — the game does not care. Ranking runs King high to Ace low, with no wraparound: nothing may ever be placed on an Ace.

Movement is suit-strict. A group of cards moves together only if it is a perfect descending sequence of a single suit. Same-suit runs travel as one unit; anything mixed does not.

A worked example makes the asymmetry concrete. Suppose a column ends 9♠ 8♠ 7♥. Placing the 7♥ on the 8♠ was perfectly legal. But if you now want to move cards onto a waiting 10♦, you cannot lift all three — the 7♥ breaks the spade sequence. Your options are to move the 7♥ alone (onto any 8), or to move it away first and then carry 9♠ 8♠ to the 10♦ as a unit. Had the column ended 9♠ 8♠ 7♠ instead, all three would travel together in one move. Every off-suit placement you make creates exactly this kind of future untangling work.

Two housekeeping rules complete the picture. When the last face-up card leaves a column, the face-down card beneath it flips face up immediately. And a card or movable run can only be picked up from the top of a column — you can never extract cards from the middle of a stack.

Dealing from the stock

When you run out of useful moves — or decide the position is as tidy as it will get — click the stock. It deals ten cards at once, one face up onto each column, regardless of what those columns hold. There are five such deals, and after the fifth the stock is gone.

One restriction matters enormously: the stock will not deal while any column is empty. The reason is mechanical — the deal places exactly one card on every column, so a gap would receive a lone random card, and the game's designers chose to force you to fill gaps deliberately instead. Practically, this means the card you drop into an empty column before dealing is a real decision, and often the only free choice you get before ten random cards bury the table. The strategy guide covers how to make that choice well.

Note what the deal does to your position: every column gets one card deeper, and any tidy sequence you left exposed is now covered. Preparing the table before each deal is a skill in itself.

Completing runs

The moment a column contains a full King, Queen, Jack, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, Ace of one suit, in order and unbroken, that run is removed from the table automatically. You do not choose when — the game takes it the instant it forms. There are no foundations to build on, which is the clearest structural difference between Spider and Klondike.

Two decks contain eight complete suits, so eight runs win the game. Runs can be completed in any order, and a run's removal often flips a face-down card or opens a column — completed runs pay dividends beyond their 100 points.

Empty columns

When a column is cleared entirely, the gap accepts any single card or any movable same-suit run — there is no rank restriction, unlike Klondike's Kings-only rule. You may park a lone 2 there or relocate a nine-card spade run; both are legal.

The only thing an empty column will not tolerate is a stock deal, as covered above. Beyond that single restriction, an empty column is the most powerful resource in the game — a workspace for re-sorting mixed stacks that the strategy guide treats as the central resource of serious play.

Scoring

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

• You begin with 500 points.
• Every move subtracts 1 point — undos included.
• Every completed King-to-Ace run adds 100 points.

Eight runs are worth 800 points, and a mathematically perfect game needs 46 moves, so the theoretical maximum is 1,254 — a ceiling no human play reaches. In practice, a win above 1,000 reflects disciplined play and anything past 1,150 is exceptional. Because the only penalty is per move, the score is really a move counter in disguise: planning ahead is scoring well.

Some implementations add a time bonus on top of the classic formula, or use entirely different point scales (Microsoft's later versions award roughly 1,300 per completed run under an alternative system). When comparing scores, make sure both games used the same scheme — the classic 500-start model is the one this site reports.

Undo rules

Undo behavior is the least standardized rule in Spider. The common conventions:

• Unlimited undo, with the per-move charge — the most common model, and ours. You may step back as far as you like, but each undo costs a point like any move.
• Barriers — many versions will not undo past a stock deal or past the automatic removal of a completed run. Treat those moments as commitments.
• Strict modes — some apps offer a no-undo mode for players who want the classical experience. Win rates drop sharply without undo; the widely quoted figures (~62% at 1 suit, ~28% at 2, ~6% at 4) assume no undo.

None of this is cheating either way — undo is a documented feature, and how you use it just changes which game you are playing. Our winnability article looks at how dramatically undo shifts the odds.

Variant differences: 1, 2, and 4 suits

All three variants deal the identical layout — 104 cards, ten columns, five stock deals. Only the suit mix changes.

Variant	Composition	What it means in play
1 Suit	Eight copies of one suit (usually spades)	Every descending placement is also a movable run
2 Suits	Four copies each of two suits	About half of convenient moves cross suits and freeze cards
4 Suits	Two complete standard decks	Most available moves create mixed stacks you must later unwind

Because placement is suit-blind, the rules never change between variants — what changes is how often the card you can place is also a card you can later move. That single variable swings the no-undo win rate from roughly 62% down to roughly 6%. How strategy shifts across that range is the subject of our 2-suits-vs-4-suits article.

Common rule misconceptions

Most "bugs" reported by new players are rules working as intended. The six most common:

1. "I can move any descending stack." False. Descending order makes a stack legal to build, but only same-suit sequences move as a unit. This is the single most misunderstood rule in the game.
2. "The deal button is broken." Almost always an empty column. The stock never deals over a gap — fill every column and it will work.
3. "Completed runs go to foundations." No. Spider has no foundations; finished runs are removed from the tableau automatically, and you cannot keep or reuse them.
4. "An Ace can go on a King." No wraparound exists. The Ace is the lowest rank, accepts nothing on top of it, and ends every sequence.
5. "Empty columns only take Kings." That is Klondike. In Spider any card or movable run may be placed into an empty column.
6. "Alternating colors matter." Also Klondike. Spider ignores color entirely — suit identity matters for movement, but red-on-black has no special status.

If you came here from another solitaire, that pattern is worth noticing: half of these misconceptions are Klondike rules smuggled across. The three-way comparison lays out exactly where the games diverge, and Solitaire Terms Explained untangles the shared vocabulary.

Rules questions, answered

The short answers to the questions players ask most. When you are ready to move from legal to good, the strategy guide is the next page to read — or head back to the table and put the rules to work.