How to Play Spider Solitaire: Rules, Suits, and Winning Strategy

To play Spider Solitaire you arrange 104 cards across ten columns into descending runs from King down to Ace. The moment a column holds a complete King-to-Ace run in a single suit, that run lifts off the board. Clear eight of those runs and you win. You can stack any card on a card one rank higher, whatever its suit, but you can only pick up a group of cards if they are already in order and all one suit. That tension between loose placement and strict movement is the whole game. When you run out of moves, you deal a fresh row of ten cards from the stock. You can play it free in your browser at Offline Games Arcade, with no download and no sign-up.

How a Spider Solitaire game is set up

Spider always uses 104 cards, the equivalent of two full decks. What changes with difficulty is how many suits those cards come in (more on that below). The deal looks like this:

Ten columns (the tableau). The first four columns get six cards each and the other six get five, so 54 cards start on the board. Only the bottom card of each column is face up. Everything above it is hidden.
The stock. The remaining 50 cards sit in the top corner, face down. That’s exactly five deals of ten cards, and the label counts down how many you have left.
The runs area. Every completed King-to-Ace sequence flies up here. A counter in the header tracks your progress toward 8/8.

There are no foundations to build on and no free cells. Unlike Solitaire, you never send cards home one at a time. Runs only leave the board as complete 13-card sets.

The rules of Spider Solitaire

Every legal action in the game comes down to five rules:

Place a card on any card one rank higher. A 7 of hearts can go on an 8 of spades. Suit and color don’t matter for placement.
Move a group only if it’s a same-suit run. You can pick up a single card, or several cards together if they descend in order and share a suit. A 9♠-8♠-7♠ moves as one unit. A 9♠-8♥-7♠ does not, and you’d have to break it up first.
Any card can fill an empty column. An empty column accepts any card or any movable run, not just Kings.
Deal from the stock only when no column is empty. Tapping the stock puts one face-up card on every column. If even one column is empty, the game blocks the deal and tells you to fill it first.
A complete King-to-Ace run in one suit clears automatically. You don’t have to do anything. As soon as the thirteen cards line up at the bottom of a column, they’re removed and the card underneath flips face up.

Face-down cards turn over automatically whenever the card covering them moves away. If you run out of legal moves with runs still left to clear, the game ends with a “No More Moves” screen.

Choosing 1, 2, or 4 suits

Before each game you pick a difficulty, and this choice matters more than any single move you’ll make:

Easy (1 Suit). All 104 cards are spades. Every descending sequence is automatically same-suit, so any ordered stack can move together. This is the best place to learn how deals and empty columns work.
Medium (2 Suits). Spades and hearts, four copies of each. This is the default, and it’s where the “place by rank, move by suit” rule really starts to bite.
Hard (4 Suits). A full two-deck spread of spades, hearts, diamonds, and clubs. Mixed-suit stacks form constantly, and untangling them is the real work.

The jump from one suit to two is bigger than it sounds. On Easy, a long ordered stack is always a movable asset. On Medium and Hard, a long stack with a suit break in the middle is stuck: it looks organized, but you can only move the part below the break. Your wins and best score are tracked separately for each difficulty, so a four-suit record never gets buried under easy wins.

Controls, undo, and scoring

Play is tap-based and works the same on a phone or a laptop. Tap a card to pick it up along with everything below it (the game only lets you select a valid same-suit run), then tap the column you want to move it to. Tapping a card that can’t be picked up gives it a small shake, so you learn the movement rule by feel. Tap the stock to deal a new row.

Undo steps back through moves and deals, with one important exception: completing a run clears your undo history. Once thirteen cards fly off the board, everything before that point is locked in. Think of each completed run as a checkpoint.

Scoring is simple and worth understanding:

You start at 500 points.
Every move, every deal from the stock, and every undo costs 1 point.
Every completed run adds 100 points.

A win therefore adds 800 points from runs, minus however many actions you took to get there. Your score is really an efficiency rating: the fewer moves, deals, and undos, the higher the number. That makes Best Score a good personal target once winning itself starts to feel routine.

Spider Solitaire strategy that wins more games

Uncover hidden cards before anything else

With 44 cards face down at the start, information is your scarcest resource. When you’re choosing between two moves, prefer the one that flips a new card. Short columns are good targets: the four columns with six cards and the six with five differ by only one card, so look for columns where a couple of moves will dig all the way down.

Build in suit whenever you have the choice

Rank-only placement is allowed, and sometimes it’s necessary. But every off-suit placement creates a stack you can’t move as a unit later. If a 6♥ could go on either a 7♥ or a 7♠, choose the heart. On two- and four-suit games, this one habit separates boards that come apart cleanly from boards that lock up after the third deal.

Treat empty columns as your most valuable space

An empty column lets you break apart a mixed-suit stack, park a run while you reorganize, or reach a buried card. Clearing one is often worth several otherwise pointless moves. There’s a catch unique to Spider, though: you can’t deal while a column is empty. So the usual pattern is to empty a column, use it to fix as much as you can, then fill it back up with a sensible card (ideally a King or a high same-suit run) before you deal.

Don’t deal until you’ve used every useful move

Each deal drops a card on top of all ten columns, often covering exactly the card you were working toward. You only get five. Before tapping the stock, scan every column for moves that flip a card, rebuild in suit, or empty a column. Deal when the board is as tidy as you can make it, not when you first feel stuck.

Use undo to test ideas, but mind the checkpoints

Because undo works until a run completes, you can safely test a line of play, see what flips over, and back out if it’s bad. Each undo costs a point, so this trades a little score for a lot of information. Just remember that the instant a run clears, you’re committed.

Common mistakes that lose Spider games

Building long mixed-suit towers. They look like progress, but they block a whole column. Ask whether you’ll ever be able to move them.
Filling an empty column with a low card for no reason. A lone 3 in an empty column is hard to cover and hard to move off again. Use empty space for work, not storage.
Starting on four suits. Hard mode is a genuinely different puzzle. Win a few one-suit and two-suit games first so the deal timing and empty-column habits are automatic.

If you like Spider Solitaire, try these next

FreeCell is the opposite style: every card is face up from the start, so it’s pure planning with no hidden information.
Solitaire is classic Klondike, with alternating colors and foundations built one card at a time.
Peg Solitaire has no cards at all, but it rewards the same “keep your options open” thinking.
Mahjong is tile matching where uncovering the right pieces in the right order decides the game.
Sudoku and Minesweeper are good picks if what you enjoy is the logic rather than the cards.

If you’d rather have an opponent, Hearts and Gin Rummy run in the same browser tab with nothing to install.

FAQ

How many decks does Spider Solitaire use? Spider always uses 104 cards, the size of two full decks. On one-suit and two-suit difficulty, those 104 cards are made of multiple copies of the same one or two suits.

Why can’t I deal a new row in Spider Solitaire? You can’t deal from the stock while any column is empty. Move a card or run into the empty column first, then tap the stock. You also get only five deals per game.

Can you move cards of different suits together? You can place any card on a card one rank higher, but you can only pick up a group if it’s a descending run in a single suit. Mixed-suit stacks have to be moved one same-suit section at a time.

Is 1-suit Spider Solitaire easy to win? It’s the most forgiving version, because every ordered stack can move as a unit, and it’s the best way to learn deal timing. Two suits and four suits get much harder, since suit breaks trap cards in place.

Is Spider Solitaire free to play with no download? Yes. Spider Solitaire runs free in any browser with no download or sign-up, and it also works fully offline in the free Offline Games Arcade app for iOS and Android.

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