How to play Spider Solitaire

By Ari Hlynsson · 1 player · Updated 10 September 2026

Build eight sequences, each running king down to ace in one suit. A finished sequence leaves the table on its own, and clearing all eight wins the game.

The rules, step by step

1. 1

   Fifty-four cards are dealt into ten columns — six each into the first four, five into the rest — with the last card of every column face up. The other fifty stay in the stock.

2. 2

   Build a column downward one rank at a time. Any suit will do: a heart six goes onto a spade seven quite legally.

3. 3

   Only a run of one suit can be picked up and carried. A spade seven with a spade six on it moves as a pair; the same seven with a heart six on it cannot move at all.

4. 4

   Taking the last face-up card off a column turns over the card beneath it. That is where nearly all of your progress comes from.

5. 5

   An empty column will take any card or any run, which makes it the most useful square on the board.

6. 6

   When nothing will move, tap the stock to deal one more card onto every column. There are five rows in there, and none of them will deal while a column is empty.

7. 7

   Complete a king-to-ace run in one suit and it lifts off the board by itself. Do that eight times and the game is over.

Tips that change how you play

• Build in suit whenever you have the choice. Dropping a heart six on a spade seven is legal, and it is also the move that freezes both cards exactly where they lie.
• Turn face-down cards over before anything else. A face-down card is the only thing on the board you cannot plan around.
• Treat an empty column as a decision, not a prize. It is the one place a king can go, and it is also the reason the stock will not deal — an empty column you are hoarding is a row you cannot draw.
• Start on one suit and stay there until you are winning. Four suits is the same game with almost nothing you build able to move, and it is where most people decide they dislike Spider.

A worked opening

Say the face-up cards read, left to right, a spade nine, a heart four, a spade eight, a heart jack, a spade seven, a heart six, a club two, a diamond ten, a spade king and a heart five. The tempting move is the heart six onto the spade seven, because it is right in front of you. The better one is the spade eight onto the spade nine, then the spade seven onto that eight: three spades in a row, all still liftable as one, and two columns turned over instead of none. Now the heart five goes onto the heart six, in suit, and you have a second pair that can travel. The heart four could go onto that five to make three — but look at what is under it first, because a column of one is a column you can empty, and the spade king is sitting where an empty column would be worth the most.

Mistakes that cost beginners the game

Playing a card onto the first space that fits rather than onto its own suit.

In Spider a pile you may build and a pile you may carry are two different things. Once a heart six sits on a spade seven, neither of them moves again until the six goes somewhere on its own. Where two landings are legal, the one in suit is worth more than the tempo you spend finding it.

Dealing a new row as soon as the board looks slow.

A row lands on all ten columns at once and buries whatever you had lined up, including runs you spent several moves assembling. Take every ordinary move first. A row you have not dealt is still a row you have.

Emptying a column with nothing ready to put in it.

An empty column blocks the stock, so a board with an empty column and no legal move is genuinely finished. Empty one when you have a king to move there, or when the move you need it for is the next one — not on the general principle that space is good.

Common questions about Spider Solitaire