Spider Solitaire — Free Online, 1, 2 or 4 Suits
Spider Solitaire is a two-deck patience game in which you deal 104 cards into ten columns and win by assembling eight complete same-suit runs from King down to Ace, each of which is removed from the table as soon as it is finished. Clear Solitaire runs all three difficulties — one suit, two suits and four suits — in your browser with large, high-contrast cards, no download and no account.
Why Spider feels different from Klondike
Klondike is a game about a scarce stock and four foundations you feed one card at a time. Spider has no waste pile, no alternating colours and no drip-feed of single cards. Instead it hands you ten columns and a stock that lands ten cards at once, all face up, whether you were ready or not.
That one rule — the stock deals a card onto every column — is what gives Spider its shape. Every deal buries whatever tidy work you had done. The whole game is a race to convert loose cards into ordered runs before the next deal lands on top of them.
The layout
Ten columns. Fifty-four cards are dealt at the start: six cards each into the first four columns and five each into the remaining six. Only the bottom card of each column is face up; the 44 cards above them are face down.
The stock. The other 50 cards sit face down in the corner, dealt in five rounds of ten.
No foundations, exactly. There is nowhere to send an Ace on its own. A run only leaves the table when it is complete: King, Queen, Jack, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, Ace, all in one suit. Eight of those and the game is won.
The rules in full
Building. You may place any card on a card one rank higher, regardless of suit. A red 8 goes on any 9. This is why Spider is playable at all in the four-suit game.
Moving groups. You may only move more than one card at a time if those cards form a descending run in the same suit. A 9-8-7 all of hearts moves as a block; a 9 of hearts, 8 of spades, 7 of hearts does not — that one moves a single card at a time. This is the rule the entire difficulty setting turns on.
Empty columns. Any card or valid same-suit run may be moved into an empty column. There is no King restriction. Empty columns are the most valuable thing on a Spider board.
Dealing. Pressing the stock deals one card face up onto every column. You cannot deal while any column is empty — a rule that regularly forces a genuinely hard decision late in the game.
Completion. The moment a full King-to-Ace same-suit sequence forms in a column, it is removed. The card underneath turns face up.
Winning. Clear all eight runs.
One suit, two suits, four suits
The number of suits in play is Spider’s difficulty dial, and it is a steep one.
One suit uses only spades — 104 cards of the same suit. Every descending run is automatically same-suit, so every ordered group moves as a block. This is Spider as a puzzle of sequencing and space, and it is where anyone new to the game should start. Roughly 69.3% of random one-suit deals are solvable.
Two suits uses spades and hearts. Now half your builds are “off-suit” and freeze into place. You have to start choosing between a move that flips a face-down card and a move that keeps a suit intact. Solvable share of random deals: 11.7% proved so far, and that is a floor rather than a measurement — a deal our solver runs out of time on is counted as a miss, so the true share is considerably higher.
Four suits is the full game. Most of what you build cannot be moved again as a unit, so every off-suit placement is a small mortgage on the future. Solvable share of random deals: not enough evidence to quote one — of the 67 four-suit deals our solver has scanned it managed to prove exactly 1 winnable, which is a statement about the solver rather than about the game. Human win rates in four-suit Spider are famously low; a player who wins one game in five is doing very well.
You can switch suit count in Settings at any time. Because the number of suits changes what deck is shuffled, switching deals a new game.
Strategy for Spider Solitaire
Same suit beats everything, almost
If you have a choice between placing a 7 on an off-suit 8 or on a same-suit 8, take the same suit nearly every time. An off-suit join is a card you have to unpick later, one at a time, and unpicking costs the empty columns you were saving. The exception is when the off-suit move flips a face-down card and the same-suit move doesn’t — early in the game, information usually wins.
Empty a column early, and guard it
An empty column is a workspace. With one empty column you can take a five-card off-suit mess apart and put it back together in order. With no empty column you are stuck with whatever the deal gave you. In the opening, aim your moves at the shortest column — usually one of columns 5 through 10 — and try to clear it before the first deal.
Do not deal until you have run out of useful moves
Every deal makes the board worse before it makes it better. Squeeze the position first: flip everything you can flip, join everything you can join in suit, and only then press the stock. And remember you cannot deal with an empty column, so decide before you press whether you want to spend your empty column filling it.
Level the columns before you deal
The deal adds exactly one card to every column, so a column that is one card away from being unmanageable will get there. Where you have a free choice, put cards on the shorter columns and leave the towers alone.
Break up your own runs when you have to
New players treat a long descending run as a trophy. It is often a wall. If a 10-9-8-7 off-suit run in column 3 is sitting on the only face-down card you need, taking it apart is the right move, and having an empty column is what makes it possible.
Count the cards you have committed
Eight runs, thirteen cards each. If you are deep in a four-suit game and three of your four hearts Kings are buried under off-suit builds, the game may already be lost even though the board looks busy. Recognising that early saves you twenty minutes and gets you into the next deal.
Playing Spider here
Spider puts more cards on screen than any other common patience game, which makes readability the whole ballgame. Columns here use a generous stack offset so you can see the rank and suit of every buried card rather than a sliver. Cards default to Large, and Large Print enlarges the ranks and pips further for anyone who wants them bigger still. In dark mode the table goes dark but card faces stay near-white, so the red and black stay clearly apart.
Winnable deals only is on by default in every suit count, including four suits — each deal is solver-verified before you see it. This matters more in Spider than anywhere else, because a four-suit deal you cannot win looks exactly like a four-suit deal you played badly. You can switch it off for genuinely random deals.
Unlimited undo (U) is available, along with a hint key (H), and the whole board is keyboard-operable with arrow keys, Enter/Space and Escape. Nothing covers the board - no pop-ups, no forced video. There is nothing to download and no account to make.
Frequently asked questions
What is the easiest Spider Solitaire?
One-suit Spider is by far the easiest version, and it is not close. With only spades in play, every descending sequence you build is automatically same-suit, which means any ordered group of cards can be picked up and moved as a unit. That single fact removes most of the game’s difficulty: you are never stuck with a run you cannot relocate, and empty columns go much further. A large majority of random one-suit deals are solvable — 69.3% — compared with four suits, where our solver has so far proved only 1 deal out of 67 scanned — far too small a sample to put a figure on. If you are learning Spider, play one suit until winning feels routine, then move to two. Two-suit Spider is a genuine step up but still very playable; four suits is a different game.
How do you win 4 suit Spider Solitaire?
Four-suit Spider is won by protecting two things: same-suit connections and empty columns. Concretely — prefer same-suit placements over off-suit ones except when an off-suit move flips a face-down card in the opening; work toward emptying your shortest column before the first deal from the stock; never deal while you still have productive moves available, because the deal buries everything; spread cards onto shorter columns so no column becomes a tower; and be willing to break apart a long off-suit run when it is sitting on a card you need, which is only possible if you have kept a column free. Expect to lose most games even with solver-verified deals and good play — that is the nature of four suits, not a reflection on you. Unlimited undo lets you back up and try a different order rather than starting over.
Can you always win Spider Solitaire?
No. With a random shuffle, a substantial proportion of Spider deals — especially at four suits — have no winning line at all, whatever you do. The stock is dealt blind onto every column, so a deal can bury the cards you need in an order that no sequence of legal moves can recover. Clear Solitaire’s Winnable deals only setting is on by default and gives you deals that a solver has already played to completion, so at least one path to eight finished runs exists. That still does not mean the game will be easy: solvable four-suit deals routinely require an exact order of moves, and finding it is the challenge. If you would rather face the true odds, you can turn the setting off.