How to Play Spider Solitaire
Spider Solitaire uses two full decks — 104 cards. Fifty-four are dealt into ten columns to start (four columns of six, six columns of five), with only the bottom card of each column face up; the remaining fifty form the stock, dealt ten at a time. There are no foundations: you win by building eight complete same-suit sequences from King down to Ace, each of which is removed as it is finished. This page covers the deal, the run-completion rule, the deal-a-row restriction and how the suit count changes the game.
Step by step
- Build runs downward. Drag a card onto one exactly one rank higher, any suit. A run in a single suit moves together; a mixed descending run still moves as long as ranks step down by one.
- Complete a suit King-to-Ace. Assemble a full same-suit sequence from King down to Ace in one column and it clears automatically, turning over the card beneath.
- Deal a new row when stuck. Click the stock to deal one card onto every column. You cannot deal while any column is empty, so fill gaps first.
- Clear all eight runs to win. Remove all eight complete suit runs to empty the table. Fewer suits means easier runs; four suits is the toughest.
Strategy
Build in-suit whenever you have the choice — a run has to be one suit to clear, so a mixed run you have to unpick later is wasted effort. Empty a column as early as you can; an open column is the single most powerful tool in Spider because you can park anything there. Never deal a new row while you still have moves that turn over face-down cards or tidy a run, and remember you cannot deal at all with an empty column on the board, so fill it first. In 4-suit, expect to lean on undo and the winnable mode.