Spider Solitaire, Classic Card Game
Play Spider Solitaire free in your browser. 1, 2 or 4 suit difficulty, drag and drop, undo, timer and scoring. No download needed.
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Spider Solitaire is one of the most popular solitaire card games in the world, a two-deck patience game whose name comes from the eight foundations you must fill, one for each leg of a spider. The game first appeared in print in 1949, and card historians trace its ancestry to older two-deck patience games of the 19th century. Like Klondike before it, Spider owes its modern fame to Microsoft: a digital version shipped with the Microsoft Plus! 98 pack and later became a standard inclusion in Windows ME, XP, Vista and 7. For millions of office workers in the 2000s, Spider Solitaire quietly replaced Klondike as the default way to spend five spare minutes, and by some Microsoft telemetry it overtook the classic Solitaire in play time on Windows XP machines.
Frequently asked questions
How do I move cards in Spider Solitaire?
What is the difference between 1 suit, 2 suits and 4 suits?
Why can't I deal new cards from the stock?
Why can't I move a sequence of cards together?
How does the scoring work?
What percentage of Spider Solitaire games can be won?
What is the best strategy for Spider Solitaire?
Can I undo moves or replay the same deal?
Is my progress or best score saved?
Where does the name Spider Solitaire come from?
About Spider Solitaire, Classic Card Game
The rules use 104 cards, two full standard decks. Ten tableau columns are dealt at the start: the first four columns receive six cards each and the remaining six receive five, with only the top card of each column face up. The remaining 50 cards form the stock. Within the tableau you may move a single card, or a neatly ordered run of same-suit cards in descending sequence, onto any card exactly one rank higher, regardless of suit, or onto an empty column. Whenever you assemble a complete sequence from King down to Ace in a single suit, those thirteen cards are removed to a foundation. When you run out of useful moves, dealing from the stock places one new face-up card on every column, but a deal is only allowed while no column is empty. You win by completing all eight runs.
Difficulty in Spider is controlled by the number of suits in play. The one-suit game (all spades) is the gentlest introduction, since every descending run is automatically same-suit and movable. Two suits (spades and hearts) roughly doubles the planning burden, and the full four-suit game is one of the hardest widely played solitaire variants, with expert win rates far below those of Klondike. Sound strategy matters at every level: empty columns are the most valuable resource in the game, so work to clear a short column early and keep it available as a staging area. Prefer moves that turn face-down cards face up, build runs in suit whenever you have the choice, and think twice before dealing from the stock, because each deal buries every column under one more arbitrary card.
This browser version implements the complete standard rules with a difficulty selector for 1, 2 or 4 suits, drag-and-drop and click-to-move controls, multi-level undo, a move counter, a timer and classic scoring that starts at 500 points, subtracts one per move and awards 100 for each completed run. You can restart the same deal to try a different line, and your wins, best score and best time for each difficulty are stored locally in your browser. Nothing is uploaded, no account is needed, and the game works on desktop, tablet and phone.
Spider Solitaire: The Patience Game That Conquered Windows XP
Spider is much older than its computer fame suggests. Two-deck patience games flourished in the 19th century, and a game recognisable as Spider was described in American card compendiums by 1949. One frequently repeated anecdote holds that Franklin D. Roosevelt counted Spider among his favourite ways to relax during his presidency, a claim that appeared in contemporary accounts of his card habits and helped the game's reputation as a thinking player's patience. What is certain is that Spider stood out among hundreds of solitaire variants for its unusual combination of depth and forgiveness: with two decks, ten columns and free-form building, skilled play matters far more than in most patience games.
The game's second life began in 1998, when Microsoft included a digital Spider in the Plus! 98 add-on pack for Windows 98, and then bundled it directly with Windows ME in 2000. The timing was perfect: Windows XP shipped a year later with Spider preinstalled on hundreds of millions of machines. Microsoft's own usage studies from the XP era found that Spider had become the most-played game on the system, ahead of the classic Klondike Solitaire and Minesweeper. The three-level difficulty system, one, two or four suits, introduced by the digital versions proved to be a stroke of design genius, giving beginners an entry point while offering experts one of the hardest solitaire challenges in common circulation.
Spider has also attracted serious mathematical attention. Solver research has shown that when undo is allowed, almost every one-suit deal and the overwhelming majority of four-suit deals can be won, yet human win rates at four suits without undo remain in the low double digits, one of the largest gaps between theoretical and practical solvability in any popular card game. That gap is precisely what keeps the game interesting: unlike many patience games that are decided by the shuffle, a lost game of Spider can usually be traced to an identifiable mistake, which is why players keep coming back to try the same deal one more time.