Spider

Full rules

1. Overview
2. Terms
3. Setup
4. Playing
5. End of the game
6. Difficulty levels
7. Tips for beginners
8. Variants

Overview

Spider is a patience (a card game for one player, also called solitaire) played with two decks. You shuffle cards around ten columns until each suit lies in one long run from King down to Ace; every finished run is taken out of play. Clear all eight runs and you have won. The game is known for being hard – with all four suits, good players win roughly one game in three – but there are easier levels (see Difficulty levels).

• Players: 1
• You need: two standard 52-card decks without jokers (104 cards), shuffled together, and room for ten columns.
• Time: about 20–30 minutes per game.

Terms

• Rank: the value of a card. From low to high: A, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, J, Q, K. The Ace is always low.
• Column: a pile of cards spread downwards, each card slightly overlapping the one before it, so that you can see every face-up card.
• Tableau: all ten columns together.
• Exposed card: the last card of a column – the one nearest to you, not covered by any other card.
• Build down: put a card onto a card exactly one rank higher, e.g. a 7 onto an 8.
• Suit sequence: cards at the end of a column that go down by one rank each and are all of the same suit, e.g. 9♥ 8♥ 7♥.
• Stock: the face-down pile of cards not yet dealt.
• Foundation: the space beside the tableau where finished runs of 13 cards (K down to A of one suit) are put aside.

Setup

1. Shuffle both decks together.
2. Deal 54 cards into ten columns, row by row from left to right: columns 1–4 get 6 cards each, columns 5–10 get 5 cards each. Only the last card of each column is face up; the others are face down.
3. Put the remaining 50 cards face down as the stock.

Playing

There are no turns or rounds – you make one move after another, in any order. You may:

1. Move an exposed card onto the exposed card of another column that is one rank higher. The suit does not matter: a 6♦ may go onto any 7. Nothing may be placed on an Ace (a King cannot go there).
2. Move a suit sequence as a unit onto a card one rank higher than the highest card of the sequence. 9♥ 8♥ 7♥ may go onto any 10. Cards of mixed suits cannot be moved together – only one at a time. You may also move just the lower part of a suit sequence.
3. Turn up a card: when the last face-up card of a column has been moved away, turn the face-down card beneath it face up. It is now in play.
4. Fill an empty column with any exposed card or suit sequence (not only a King).
5. Put aside a finished run: when a column ends with all 13 cards of one suit in order – K, Q, J, 10 … 2, A – you may lift the whole run off and put it on the foundation. You don't have to do it at once.
6. Deal from the stock: when you are stuck (or whenever you like), deal one card face up onto every column – ten cards, from left to right. Before you do, every empty column must be filled. You can deal from the stock five times.

Example: Column 3 ends in 8♠, column 9 holds only a 7♠, and column 6 ends in 7♣ 6♦. Move the 7♠ onto the 8♠: that makes the suit sequence 8♠ 7♠, and column 9 is now empty. Park the 6♦ there for a moment, and the 7♣ in column 6 is free to take a 6♣ – another suit sequence.

End of the game

• Won: all eight runs (each suit twice) have been put aside.
• Lost: the stock is empty and no useful move is left.

Difficulty levels

Computer versions offer three levels, and you can play all of them with real cards. The deal and all rules stay the same; only what counts as the "same suit" changes:

• Four suits (standard): as described above.
• Two suits (medium): treat the two colours as the suits. All red cards count as one suit, all black cards as the other. So 9♥ 8♦ 7♥ is a sequence that moves as a unit, and a finished run may mix hearts and diamonds.
• One suit (easy): ignore suits completely. Any downward run moves as a unit, and any 13 cards from K down to A may be put aside. Good for learning the game.

(On the computer, these levels are played with 104 cards of only one or two suits; the rules above give exactly the same game with two normal decks.)

Tips for beginners

• Build in suit whenever you can – mixed columns can only be taken apart one card at a time.
• First make moves you can undo later: putting a 5 on one of two 6s keeps your options open.
• Empty a column as early as possible. An empty column lets you rearrange mixed groups into suit sequences.
• Before dealing from the stock, sort as much as you can: the new cards cover everything.
• Turning up face-down cards matters more than tidy columns.

Variants

All optional:

• Relaxed Spider: you may deal from the stock even when a column is empty.
• Spiderette: Spider with one deck – deal 28 cards in seven columns as in Klondike (1 to 7 cards, only the last face up), then deal seven cards at a time from the stock; the last three go onto the first three columns.