Spider Solitaire (4 Suits)

How to Play Spider Solitaire (4 Suits)

The Goal of Spider Solitaire (4 Suits)

Spider Solitaire (4 Suits) is the expert version of Spider — the game as it was originally meant to be played, and one of the toughest solitaire challenges you will find anywhere. The goal is the same as in the easier versions: assemble eight complete runs of cards, each descending from King to Ace in a single suit. Every finished run is removed from the table to the foundation, and clearing all eight wins the game. What changes is the difficulty. With all four suits in play, keeping your cards organized becomes a serious test of planning and patience.

The Layout and the Cards

The game uses two complete standard decks — 104 cards containing all four suits: spades, hearts, diamonds, and clubs. Each suit appears twice, so there are two full sets of every suit, and your eight winning runs will be two in each suit.

At the start, the cards are dealt into ten tableau columns:

• The first four columns receive 6 cards each.
• The remaining six columns receive 5 cards each.
• Only the top card of each column is face up; the rest are face down.

That places 54 cards on the table. The remaining 50 cards form the stock, which will be dealt out later in five batches of ten.

How Cards Move

Spider has one central rule, and in the four-suit game it dominates every decision: you may place any card on any card one rank higher, whatever the suits — but a group of cards can only move together if it is a descending run of a single suit.

Here is the classic example. A 9♠ is showing, and you place an 8♥ on it. That placement is perfectly legal, because rank is all that matters when you lay down a card. But the 9♠ and 8♥ do not match in suit, so from now on that pair cannot travel as a unit. To move the 9♠ later, you must first relocate the 8♥ on its own. If you had placed the 8♠ instead, the pair would be a same-suit run, free to be picked up together and carried anywhere a red or black 10 — any 10 at all — is waiting.

In summary:

• A single face-up card can move onto any card one rank higher, in any suit.
• A group moves only as an unbroken, descending, single-suit run — for example, Q♦-J♦-10♦.
• Removing the last face-up card from a column flips the face-down card beneath it.
• An empty column may be filled with any single card or any same-suit run.

With four suits, only a quarter of random placements will happen to match in suit, so mixed stacks form quickly unless you actively fight them. That is the entire challenge of this game.

Dealing from the Stock

When you are out of good moves, click or tap the stock. One face-up card is dealt onto every one of the ten columns at once. The stock holds enough cards for five deals. Note the important restriction: the stock will not deal while any column is empty — you must first place a card into each empty column. Because each deal buries all ten column tops under random cards, experienced players treat the stock as a last resort and squeeze every possible move out of the table first.

Completing Runs and Winning

When a column contains a full King-to-Ace sequence in one suit — thirteen cards, unbroken and unmixed — the run is automatically lifted off the table to the foundation. You win when all eight runs are complete. Be warned: in the four-suit game, most attempts end in defeat. Even strong players win only a minority of their games without using undo. Losing is a normal part of the experience, and every loss teaches you something about ordering your moves.

Controls on This Site

Cards can be moved by drag and drop, with your mouse or your finger. You can also double-click (or double-tap) a card to send it automatically to the best available destination. The buttons above the table are New (start a fresh deal), Undo (take back a move), Redo (restore an undone move), Hint (highlight a suggested move), and Auto-finish (play out the ending once the win is certain). Undo is unlimited, which matters enormously in this variant — feel free to rewind ten or twenty moves when a plan goes wrong. Every deal has a seed identifying its exact shuffle, so you can replay a difficult deal as many times as it takes to crack it.

Spider Solitaire (4 Suits) Strategy & Tips

Play for Information, Not Speed

In the four-suit game, the winner is usually the player who saw the most cards, not the one who moved the fastest. In the opening, value every move by whether it turns over a face-down card. Forty-four cards start hidden, and among them are the exact ranks you will desperately need later. When two moves both flip a card, prefer the one from a taller column, and prefer flips that keep your remaining options open. A move that merely rearranges face-up cards without revealing anything usually spends flexibility for nothing.

Keep Your Runs Pure

With four suits, an off-suit placement is four times easier to make than to unmake. Every time you drop a card on a non-matching suit, you create a joint that can never move as a unit, and three or four such joints in one column can paralyze it for the rest of the game. So hold yourself to a discipline: make the in-suit build whenever one exists, and before making any off-suit build, ask how that card will get off again. Sometimes the honest answer is that it will not — and then it is often better to make no move at all and deal from the stock with a clean table.

Sacrifice a Column as a Junk Pile

You cannot keep all ten columns tidy — the mathematics of four suits will not allow it. Strong players deliberately choose one column, usually one whose buried cards look least promising, and designate it the junk pile. Dump awkward cards there: off-suit odds and ends, extra Kings, cards you moved only to free something more important. Concentrating the mess in one place keeps the other nine columns workable. Accept early that the junk column is lost, and stop spending moves on it.

Count Your Suits

Each suit has exactly two of every rank. When both black 5s are visible, you know no more are coming; when neither red Queen has appeared, one may be buried under that pile you were about to grow taller. Before committing to a long dig, glance around the table and count the copies you can see of the ranks you need. This habit — knowing what is still hidden — separates players who win occasionally from players who win consistently.

Accept Losses, and Use Undo to Learn

Most four-suit deals will beat you, and that is by design — this is the hardest mainstream solitaire variant. Do not measure yourself against a perfect record. Instead, use the tools this site gives you. Unlimited undo lets you treat the game as exploration: push a plan five moves deep, and if it dead-ends, rewind and branch differently. The seed system lets you replay the identical deal, so a lost game becomes a puzzle you can study rather than a shuffle gone forever. Tidy your columns and empty what you can before every stock deal, since each deal buries all ten tops at once. Played this way, every session makes you stronger, and the rare clean win — all eight runs completed — feels like a genuine achievement.

Frequently Asked Questions

More Solitaire Games