Spider Solitaire 4 Suit is the version experienced players mean when they say "Spider Solitaire" without qualification — the original game as Robert Donner built it at Microsoft, with all four suits in play and a win rate under 20% even for strong players. Two full decks deal across ten columns. Only same-suit descending sequences can be moved as a group. Mixed-suit stacks, no matter how long or tidily arranged, are frozen in place as a unit. If you want the hardest mainstream solitaire game that still rewards skill over luck, you've found it.
What is Spider Solitaire 4 Suit?
Spider Solitaire 4 Suit — also called spider solitaire four suit or simply "hard Spider" — is the full-difficulty version of Spider Solitaire. The game uses two standard 52-card decks shuffled together (104 cards total). Ten tableau columns hold the initial deal; eight complete King-to-Ace sequences in the same suit must be built and cleared to win. The four additional decks of stock cards (dealt ten at a time to the columns when play stalls) add depth and the threat of an unmanageable board if columns are not kept clear.
The defining constraint of 4 Suit is the movement rule: you can only move a group of cards as a unit if every card in that group is the same suit in descending sequence. A run of 8♠ 7♠ 6♠ moves freely. A run of 8♠ 7♥ 6♠ — even though it descends in rank — is stuck as a group; you can only move the top card off it individually. This single rule transforms Spider from a relaxed sequencing game into a demanding puzzle where suit management determines everything.
The 1-suit and 2-suit Spider variants exist specifically as accessibility reductions from 4 Suit. They use the same board layout and the same deal but relax the movement rule: in 1-suit play, all cards are the same suit so every descending sequence moves freely; in 2-suit play, two suits are in play and mixed-suit runs are still immovable as groups but the constraint affects fewer sequences. If you've played and enjoyed those variants, 4 Suit is the logical — and significantly more brutal — next step.
How to play Spider Solitaire — 4 Suit
Step 1 — Deal the initial tableau
Deal 104 cards (two standard 52-card decks) across ten columns. The first four columns receive six cards each; the remaining six columns receive five cards each. Only the top card of each column is face-up. The remaining cards form a reserve deck off to the side, dealt in groups of ten.
Step 2 — Build descending sequences in the tableau
Move cards between columns to build downward by rank. Any single face-up card can be placed on any card one rank higher regardless of suit — a red 7 on a black 8, or a black 7 on a red 8, or any 7 on any 8. Mixed-suit placement is legal for individual cards. The restriction applies only to groups.
Step 3 — Move groups only when same-suit
To move a group of cards as a unit, every card in the group must form a consecutive descending sequence in the same suit. A 9♦ 8♦ 7♦ run moves as one piece. A 9♦ 8♣ 7♦ run cannot — you must move 9♦ alone, leaving 8♣ 7♦ behind. This is the central challenge of 4 Suit Spider.
Step 4 — Clear a complete King-to-Ace suit sequence
When you build a complete descending sequence from King to Ace all in the same suit — 13 consecutive same-suit cards — that sequence is automatically removed from the tableau and placed in a completed foundation. You need to clear eight such sequences (four suits, two decks) to win.
Step 5 — Deal from the reserve when stuck
When you cannot or choose not to make a productive tableau move, click the reserve to deal one card face-up to each of the ten columns. You cannot deal from the reserve if any column is empty. Plan your columns accordingly before dealing — an empty column is too valuable to fill involuntarily.
Step 6 — Win by clearing all eight sequences
Clear all eight King-to-Ace same-suit sequences from the tableau to win. With a real-game win rate of 10–20%, finishing a 4 Suit Spider game is a mark of genuine solitaire skill.
The Spider 4 Suit play area
Spider Solitaire 4 Suit uses a wider board than most solitaire variants to accommodate ten tableau columns. The columns dominate the play area. At the bottom of the screen (or beside the board on wider displays), the reserve shows the remaining deal piles — typically represented as five stacked packs of ten cards, dealt out one pile at a time. The completed foundations appear at the top or corner, showing each of the eight cleared suit sequences as they are removed from the board.
Mr. Solitaire renders all ten columns clearly with suit-colored card backs and face-up cards that show suit symbols prominently — critical for tracking which cards belong to which suit sequences in a game where suit management is everything. The move counter and elapsed time run in the info bar. An undo button is available; unlike in Klondike, in 4 Suit Spider you'll use it regularly as you work out whether a contemplated sequence of moves actually leads somewhere.
Available moves in 4 Suit Spider
Spider Solitaire 4 Suit has a compact set of legal moves, but the suit constraint creates enormous strategic depth within them.
Move a single card. Any face-up top card on a column can be moved to any other column where the top card is one rank higher, regardless of suit. This is the only movement that ignores the suit rule. Use it to position cards for future same-suit sequence building.
Move a same-suit sequence. A group of face-up cards that form a descending sequence all in one suit can be moved as a unit to any column where the top card is one rank above the sequence's top card. Mixed-suit groups of any length cannot be moved as a unit — only their individual top card is movable.
Deal from the reserve. Click the reserve to deal one new card face-up to each of the ten columns. Dealing is only allowed if no column is empty. Plan your board before dealing — once those ten cards land, you can't undo the decision to deal without using undo.
Claim a completed sequence. When a full King-to-Ace sequence of the same suit is assembled in a column (with the King at the bottom and the Ace on top), it is automatically removed and placed in the completed foundations. You cannot defer this — the sequence is removed as soon as it is completed.
Spider Solitaire 4 Suit strategy
Treat suit separation as the primary objective
Before you think about building sequences, think about sorting suits. Mixed-suit columns are the enemy — they freeze cards in place and prevent you from moving useful sequences when you need to. Whenever you have a legal move that puts a card onto a same-suit neighbor (even temporarily), take it. Every step toward single-suit columns is a step toward a winnable board.
Keep at least one empty column at all times
Empty columns in Spider 4 Suit are your most valuable tool and your scarcest resource. They act as temporary parking for cards you need to move to rearrange sequences underneath. Before dealing from the reserve (which requires all ten columns to be occupied), make sure you have a plan for immediately using that empty column productively — or create a new one quickly after the deal.
Do not deal from the reserve until you must
Each reserve deal buries your carefully sorted tableau under ten new cards. Deal only when the board is genuinely stuck: no same-suit sequence moves available and no single-card moves that improve suit alignment. The later you can delay a reserve deal, the more control you retain. Dealing prematurely is the most common way a winnable 4 Suit game becomes unwinnable.
Plan two columns ahead before moving
In Spider 4 Suit, a single card move often makes a follow-on move legal or illegal. Before moving a card to a column, ask: does this block any same-suit sequence I'm building on this destination column? Does it bury a card I'll need on the next deal? The game rewards players who see three moves ahead; it punishes players who react to the current board state without considering downstream consequences.
Build sequences in the shorter columns
Long columns are harder to manage — face-down cards at their base are more expensive to reach. When you have a choice of which column to extend a sequence into, prefer shorter columns. Keeping column lengths roughly equal gives you more flexibility and means fewer cards to move when you need to reach something buried.
Track which suits are "ahead" in sequence completion
With two decks and four suits, you're building eight sequences total — two per suit. Track which suit has the most cards already consolidated into single-suit runs. Concentrate effort on the suit that's furthest ahead: clearing even one sequence early opens a column, which makes everything else easier. Spreading effort evenly across all four suits is less efficient than pushing one suit to completion first.
Advertisement
Odds of winning Spider Solitaire 4 Suit
Spider Solitaire 4 Suit has a win rate of roughly 10–20% for experienced players using good strategy. The wide range reflects deal variation — some deals are structurally easier because the initial distribution happens to cluster suits together; others deal all four suits in maximally interleaved patterns that are nearly impossible to untangle. Even with perfect play and full undo, a meaningful percentage of 4 Suit Spider deals cannot be won.
The theoretical solvability of Spider 4 Suit is harder to analyze than Klondike because the game tree is much larger — 104 cards across ten columns with reserve deals creates a combinatorial space that exhaustive solvers struggle with. Practical estimates based on computer solver performance suggest somewhere between 60–70% of deals are theoretically solvable with optimal play. The gap between theoretical and practical win rates is larger than in Klondike because 4 Suit mistakes are harder to recover from.
What this means in practice: if you're winning 15% of your 4 Suit Spider games, you're performing at or above the typical strong player's level. Losing streaks of 10–15 games in a row are normal and not necessarily a sign of poor play — you may simply be working through a cluster of structurally difficult deals. The game is hard in an honest way: the wins feel earned because they are.
History of Spider Solitaire 4 Suit
Spider Solitaire was created by Robert Donner at Microsoft in the mid-1990s. Donner was a programmer on the Windows entertainment pack team, and he designed Spider specifically as a harder, multi-deck alternative to Klondike — the game that had become synonymous with Windows since 1990. The original Spider used all four suits from the outset; the 4 Suit version is not a "hard mode" added later but the game as originally conceived.
When Microsoft first shipped Spider Solitaire in Windows 98 Plus! and then bundled it with Windows Me and Windows XP, the 1-suit and 2-suit modes were added as accessibility options — explicit reductions of difficulty for users who found the full four-suit game too hard or too slow. This is the reverse of how most people encounter the variants today, where 1-suit is typically the introduction and 4-suit is the endgame. Historically, the sequence ran the other way: 4 Suit came first, and the simpler modes were backfilled.
Windows XP's bundled Spider Solitaire was the version that reached the widest audience. The game shipped in three clearly labeled difficulties — Beginner (1 suit), Intermediate (2 suits), Expert (4 suits) — and the Expert label stuck. Spider Solitaire 4 Suit became the version that serious solitaire players sought out, the one traded on office computers as a quiet measure of skill.
Microsoft Solitaire Collection, which replaced the bundled classic games starting with Windows 8, continues to ship all three Spider variants. Spider 4 Suit retains its reputation as the gold standard of difficulty among the games in the collection — harder than FreeCell on a bad day, more skill-dependent than Pyramid, and more demanding than Klondike Turn 3. On Mr. Solitaire, 4 Suit Spider is implemented with full undo, the standard deal sequence, and no arbitrary difficulty restrictions.
Frequently asked questions
What is Spider Solitaire 4 Suit?
- Spider Solitaire 4 Suit is the hardest version of Spider Solitaire, played with two full decks (104 cards) across ten tableau columns. All four suits are active. The key rule: you can only move a group of cards as a unit if every card in the group is the same suit in consecutive descending order. Mixed-suit stacks are immovable as groups. You win by clearing eight complete King-to-Ace same-suit sequences.
How is 4 Suit Spider different from 1 Suit and 2 Suit?
- In 1 Suit Spider, all 104 cards share a single suit, so every descending sequence moves freely as a group. In 2 Suit Spider, two suits are in play and mixed-suit sequences are immovable, but the constraint affects fewer cards. In 4 Suit Spider, all four suits are present, which means the vast majority of long sequences will be mixed-suit and immovable — requiring much more careful suit segregation before any sequence can be moved as a unit.
What is the win rate for Spider Solitaire 4 Suit?
- Roughly 10–20% for experienced players using deliberate strategy. The wide range reflects deal variation — some distributions cluster suits in ways that are much easier to work with. Computer solver estimates suggest around 60–70% of deals are theoretically solvable with perfect play; the gap from theory to practice is large because 4 Suit mistakes compound quickly and are hard to reverse.
Was Spider Solitaire 4 Suit the original Spider game?
- Yes. Robert Donner created Spider Solitaire at Microsoft with all four suits as the baseline game. The 1-suit and 2-suit modes were added afterward as easier accessibility options when Spider shipped with Windows XP. The familiar "Beginner / Intermediate / Expert" labeling in Windows XP Spider Solitaire maps directly to 1-suit, 2-suit, and 4-suit respectively.
Can I move any group of cards in Spider 4 Suit?
- No. You can move a group of cards only if every card in the group forms a consecutive descending sequence all in the same suit. A group like J♣ 10♣ 9♣ moves freely. A group like J♣ 10♥ 9♣ cannot be moved as a unit — you can only move the J♣ individually off the top. This is the central constraint that makes 4 Suit Spider so much harder than the other Spider variants.
What's the most important strategy in Spider Solitaire 4 Suit?
- Suit separation is the most critical habit. Mixed-suit columns freeze cards and prevent sequence movement, so every move that consolidates same-suit cards together is progress. Equally important: keep at least one empty column available as a temporary parking space for rearrangements, and delay dealing from the reserve for as long as possible — each reserve deal buries your progress under ten new cards.
Advertisement