Play Spider Solitaire Online — Free, 1, 2 & 4 Suit

TSBy The Strategy Desk·Published April 5, 2026

Spider Solitaire is one of the most popular two-deck solitaire card games ever made. Originally included with Microsoft Windows, it challenges you to arrange all 104 cards into eight complete King-through-Ace runs of the same suit. Unlike FreeCell, where all cards are visible from the start, Spider begins with many cards face-down — making it a game of both strategy and discovery.

How Spider Solitaire Works

The game uses two standard 52-card decks (104 cards total). Cards are dealt into 10 tableau columns, with the first four columns receiving 6 cards each and the remaining six columns receiving 5 cards each. Only the top card of each column is face-up. The remaining 50 cards form the stock pile.

You build descending sequences in the tableau — a 9 can go on a 10, an 8 on a 9, and so on. You can move any descending run of cards, but only same-suit runs can be moved as a group. When you complete a full 13-card run from King down to Ace in the same suit, it is automatically removed from the table. Clear all eight suits to win.

When you run out of moves, click the stock pile to deal one new card to each of the 10 columns. You can only deal from the stock when every column has at least one card.

Three Difficulty Levels

Spider Solitaire comes in three difficulty settings based on how many suits are in play:

• 1-Suit (Easy): All cards are Spades. Every card matches every other, so you only need to think about sequencing. Win rate: 99%+ with good play.
• 2-Suit (Medium): Cards use Spades and Hearts. You must match suits to move groups and complete runs. Significantly harder than 1-suit. Win rate: ~85–90%.
• 4-Suit (Hard): All four suits in play. The classic challenge. Only same-suit sequences can be moved together. Win rate: ~35–40% even for experienced players.

History & Origins

Spider's modern popularity is almost entirely a Microsoft story. The game shipped as part of Microsoft Plus! 98 and then as a default title in Windows ME (2000), which introduced two-deck patience to a worldwide desktop audience for the first time. By the time Windows XP put Spider next to Klondike in the Games menu, it was running on hundreds of millions of machines. But the format predates Redmond by more than a century. German patience collections from the 1800s describe a game called Spinne ("spider") that uses the same 10-column, two-deck cascade, and English-language patience anthologies from the early 1900s — including Lady Adelaide Cadogan's influential guides — documented near-identical builds. Franklin D. Roosevelt is frequently cited as a devoted player in the 1930s and 40s, which appears in several patience histories. The Microsoft client took an older parlour game and handed it a second life.

Strategic Principles

Spider rewards a small set of very specific habits. We encourage new players to internalise these before worrying about anything else:

• Build same-suit runs whenever you have the choice. A mixed-suit descending stack looks tidy but cannot be moved as a group. If a red 8 and a black 8 can both land on a 9, choose the suit that matches the 9 — that is the only move that keeps the group portable for the next play.
• Treat empty columns as your most valuable resource. One empty column lets you restructure a 6- or 7-card misordered stack into a clean descending run. Do not fill an empty column with the first King you see; wait until you can park a King that already has a same-suit Queen lurking elsewhere on the board.
• Never deal from the stock while you still have moves. Dealing 10 new cards onto 10 imperfect columns almost always buries playable cards. Exhaust every legal move — including same-suit consolidation moves that do not reveal a face-down card — before you touch the stock.
• Expose face-down cards in the longest columns first. Columns 1–4 start with six cards each and columns 5–10 start with five. Early in the game, a face-up reveal from column 1 or 2 gives you the most new information.
• Recognise lost 4-suit games early. If two stock deals have passed and you still have no empty columns and no complete same-suit runs building, the deal is almost certainly unwinnable. Restart rather than grinding through a dead position.

A useful heuristic we use at the desk: before every stock deal, count the number of complete King-to-Ace same-suit sequences you could theoretically still build from the cards already visible. If that number is below 4, you are unlikely to finish a 4-suit deal.

Difficulty & Win Rate

Spider's win rates are strongly coupled to suit count. Based on community telemetry from the original Microsoft client and modern implementation logs, we track the following human-play bands:

• 1-Suit: 85–92% win rate for engaged players. Nearly every deal is winnable because every card matches every other card for grouping purposes.
• 2-Suit: 60–70% win rate. Same-suit grouping constraints become real but two suits still leave enough flexibility for planning.
• 4-Suit: 5–15% win rate for skilled players. Many deals are structurally unwinnable.

These ranges come from aggregated community statistics on Microsoft Spider Solitaire (2000s desktop client) and modern browser implementations — you can see the full methodology notes in our Spider Strategy guide. Rigorous 4-suit solver analysis remains limited because the branching factor is enormous; we label those figures as estimates rather than verified solvability bounds.

Common Mistakes

The same handful of errors account for most losses we see in playtests:

• Dealing from the stock too early. Players who deal the moment they feel stuck bury playable cards under new layers and shorten the game.
• Stacking without regard to suit. Parking a red 7 on a black 8 to "keep the column neat" locks that 7 in place — you cannot move it later as part of a group.
• Breaking a partial same-suit run to make a single move. Splitting a 9-8-7 of Spades to play the 7 elsewhere usually costs more than it gains.
• Wasting empty columns on the first King available. Kings that have no matching Queen nearby become dead weight in the empty column.
• Ignoring the column-length order. Uncovering a card in column 10 (5 cards deep) is less informative than uncovering one in column 1 (6 cards deep).
• Forgetting that you can stop mid-run. You do not need to move an entire descending stack — partial moves are legal and often better.
• Restarting too late. If you have exhausted two stock deals without completing a same-suit sequence, the deal is probably lost. Our Spider tips page has a full restart decision table.

How This Game Compares

Spider shares DNA with several other cascade solitaires, but the trade-offs differ meaningfully:

• Spider vs FreeCell: FreeCell is a pure-logic puzzle — all cards face-up, no stock, ~99.9987% solvability. Spider is a game of partial information, hidden cards, and stock pressure. FreeCell punishes calculation errors; Spider punishes impatience.
• Spider vs Scorpion: Scorpion shares the two-deck build and same-suit grouping logic, but the initial deal is different — Scorpion deals all 52 cards face-up into 7 columns (with some face-down decoration) and only a tiny stock remains. That makes Scorpion closer to a partial-FreeCell hybrid than to true Spider.
• Spider vs Yukon: Yukon uses one deck and cascades with all cards face-up after the initial deal. You build descending alternating-colour runs and can move any group regardless of order beneath — very different from Spider's same-suit grouping rule, but the board feel is similar.

Variant Notes

Spider has several rule variations worth knowing:

• Same-suit vs any-suit grouping: The strict Microsoft rule only lets you move groups of cards that share a suit. Relaxed variants allow you to move any descending run regardless of suit — this dramatically raises 4-suit win rates but removes the signature constraint.
• Stock deal counts: The standard game uses a 50-card stock dealt in five rounds of 10. Some variants shorten this to three deals of 10 (leaving 20 cards in play from the start) or eliminate the stock entirely for a harder, deterministic puzzle.
• Draw-3 Spider: A curiosity variant that deals three cards per column per stock draw — rare and very punishing.
• Relaxed Spider: Allows stock dealing even with an empty column, making the game more forgiving for beginners.

Our default is classic 4-suit, same-suit grouping, 50-card stock — the configuration Microsoft shipped and the variant most competitive players use.

Spider vs FreeCell

Spider and FreeCell are both solitaire classics, but they play very differently. FreeCell uses one deck with all cards visible — it is a pure logic puzzle. Spider uses two decks with hidden cards — it blends strategy with the uncertainty of what lies beneath. For a detailed comparison, see our FreeCell vs Spider Solitaire guide.

Frequently Asked Questions

Learn More

• How to Play Spider Solitaire — Complete rules and beginner guide
• Spider Solitaire Strategy — Tips and techniques for every difficulty level
• Spider Solitaire Tips & Tricks — Practical advice for beginners and experienced players
• 1-Suit vs 2-Suit vs 4-Suit — Compare difficulty levels and find your match
• Types of Solitaire — Explore 20+ solitaire variants