Spider Two Suits Solitaire
How to play Spider Two Suits
Spider is a solitaire card game played with 104 cards in ten piles, where runs of thirteen cards in one suit, from King down to Ace, are built and cleared from the table.
Spider dealt from spades and hearts only, four of each card.
About Spider Two Suits
Spider Two Suits deals only spades and hearts, four of each card. Of the eight cards one rank higher than any card, four are of its own suit, so runs of one suit come together more often than in Spider.
With one black suit and one red, a break in a run is easy to spot: where a heart lies on a spade or a spade on a heart, the cards from that card up move apart from the cards below. Of the eight runs that leave the table, four are spades and four are hearts.
The work is choosing where each card goes. Before laying a heart on a spade, look for a pile whose top card is the heart one rank higher, or one you can uncover with a move or two. A mixed pile can be taken apart later, but only one single-suit piece at a time.
Two suits make a deal far easier to win than four. Of 546 shuffled Spider Two Suits deals the game's solver searched, at up to a million positions each, it proved 92% can be won, against 45% of four-suit Spider deals. Only the deals it proved are counted, so 92% is a floor and not the true share.
A heart Seven has four heart Eights it can join. When none shows, they are under face-down cards, still in the stock or covered in a pile, and each press of the stock turns up ten more cards.
The Hint settles most boards here: of 100 fresh Spider Two Suits deals the solver searched at 167,000 positions, it proved 80 won and left 20 open, and on a proved board the Hint shows the first move of a whole winning line.
The goal of Spider
Build eight runs of thirteen cards, each from King down to Ace in one suit. A finished run leaves the table at once, and the game is won when all eight are gone.
How to set up Spider
Spider is played with 104 cards, two packs' worth, shuffled together. 54 of them are dealt into ten piles: five face-down cards under each of the first four piles, four under each of the other six, and one face-up card on top of every pile. The other 50 cards are the stock.
Spider rules
A card can be laid on any card one rank higher, whatever its suit, so a Seven may go on any Eight. A King is never laid on an Ace.
A pile's top card can always move. A face-up card lower down moves together with the cards above it only when they run down from it in one suit, each one rank below the card under it. An empty pile takes any card or any run that may move.
Press the stock to deal one card face up onto every pile, ten cards at a time, five deals in all. The stock will not deal while any pile is empty. Whenever a face-down card is left on top of its pile, it is turned face up.
When thirteen cards of one suit run from King down to Ace on top of a pile, they leave the table at once for a foundation, whether a move or a deal completed them.
Click a face-up card to move it with the run above it onto a pile whose top card is one rank higher, of its own suit first, else into the first empty pile. Drag a card to choose its place yourself.
The full Spider guide, with strategy tips and common questions