Spider Solitaire — Play Free Online

Spider Solitaire is a single-player card game that uses two standard 52-card decks — 104 cards total. The cards are dealt across ten tableau columns with the remainder held in stock. Unlike Klondike, Spider has no foundation piles in the traditional sense: when you build a complete King-through-Ace sequence of the same suit in the tableau, that sequence automatically removes itself from the board. Clear eight of these sequences and you win.

The game's difficulty is controlled by how many suits are active. In 1-suit mode, all 104 cards are treated as spades — color and suit marking are irrelevant, only rank matters for building sequences. In 2-suit mode, hearts and spades are used; sequences must be same-suit to auto-remove. In 4-suit mode, all four suits are live, which multiplies the complexity because tableau moves across suits block future same-suit runs.

Robert Donner created Spider Solitaire at Microsoft. Windows XP shipped with it in 2001, and the game was included in every subsequent Windows version up through Windows 10. It has since been part of Microsoft Solitaire Collection, available across Windows, iOS, and Android.

The Spider board is dominated by its ten tableau columns, which stretch across the full width of the screen. Above or beside the tableau, depending on the layout, sit the stock pile (the remaining 50 cards) and a visual indicator showing how many completed sequences have been cleared. There are no free cells and no traditional foundation row — cleared sequences often animate off the board to a holding area in the corner to confirm the count.

Because Spider uses two decks, the columns get taller than in single-deck games. Early in the game this isn't a problem; after a few stock deals, columns can grow long enough that the bottom cards scroll off-screen on smaller displays. Mr. Solitaire compresses card overlap automatically to keep the full column visible.

The key visual challenge in 2-suit and 4-suit Spider is identifying which subsequences within a column are same-suit and can therefore be moved as a group versus which are mixed-suit and must be moved one card at a time. Most implementations — Mr. Solitaire included — highlight movable groups on click or hover, which is a significant help when columns get deep.

Spider's move set is simpler than FreeCell's to describe but its interactions are more complex in practice, especially in 4-suit mode.

Move a single card from one column to another. Any face-up card at the bottom of a column can move to the bottom of any column whose bottom card is exactly one rank higher. Suit and color are irrelevant for this move.

Move a same-suit run from one column to another. A consecutive descending run of cards all in the same suit, sitting at the bottom of a column, can be picked up and relocated as a unit. The destination must be one rank above the top card of the run. This is the key move for organizing columns by suit.

Deal from the stock. Click the stock pile to push one card face-up onto each of the ten columns. All columns must be non-empty to deal. Each stock deal uses 10 cards; with 50 stock cards there are exactly five possible deals.

Move any card to an empty column. Once a column empties — which requires moving every card off it — any single card or any legal group can move into that space. Empty columns are extremely valuable in Spider: they serve as temporary staging areas for reorganizing mixed-suit piles.

Automatic removal of a completed sequence. When you complete a King-through-Ace run in a single suit within the tableau, it removes itself without any player input. If that removal empties a column, that empty column is immediately available for use.

Spider Solitaire's win rate varies dramatically by suit mode. 1-suit Spider is nearly always winnable for a player who understands the basic rules — win rates above 99% are achievable because the single-suit constraint means every card can always be placed on any card of the next rank, and same-suit runs are trivially assembled. The main failure mode in 1-suit is running out of stock before the tableau is organized, which is avoidable with patience.

2-suit Spider drops to roughly 30-50% win rates for intermediate players, higher for experienced ones. The two-suit constraint means half of all placements are off-suit, and managing which piles are same-suit enough to move requires sustained attention.

4-suit Spider is the genuine challenge. Approximately 50% of deals are estimated to be winnable under optimal play. In practice, human win rates for 4-suit Spider run much lower — 10-30% is typical for regular players — because the depth of planning required to keep columns suit-organized while also managing stock timing and empty column preservation exceeds what most casual players sustain. 4-suit Spider is widely considered the hardest of the mainstream Windows solitaire variants.

Unlike FreeCell, Spider has no comprehensive enumeration of unsolvable deals. The two-deck shuffle space is far larger, and the game's complexity makes automated solving computationally expensive for 4-suit mode. If you're stuck on a 4-suit Spider game, the best available check is to use the undo button and find the earliest move where a better path existed — the dead end is almost always the result of a decision made before it was obvious.

Spider Solitaire was created by Robert Donner while working at Microsoft. The game appears to have been developed in the mid-to-late 1990s and was first widely distributed as part of the Plus! pack for Windows 98. Its largest audience arrived with Windows XP in 2001, when Microsoft included Spider Solitaire as a built-in game alongside Minesweeper, Freecell, and Hearts. Windows XP shipped on over 400 million PCs in its first several years, and Spider Solitaire came with all of them.

The name likely comes from the spider's eight legs — the game requires completing eight sequences to win. The two-deck format and the multi-suit difficulty modes were present in the original Windows version, making Spider unusual among computer solitaire games in shipping with a built-in difficulty setting from day one.

Spider remained part of every Windows release through Windows 7. When Windows 8 restructured the built-in games, Microsoft Solitaire Collection took over as the container for all included solitaire variants. The Collection version added daily challenges, in-game statistics, and the ability to replay specific hands — features that gave competitive players a reason to stay engaged beyond casual play.

Today Spider Solitaire is available in Microsoft Solitaire Collection across Windows, iOS, and Android. Its presence in Microsoft's suite for over two decades has made it one of the most-recognized two-deck solitaire games in the world, the natural next step for players who've mastered Klondike and want something harder.