How to Play Spider Solitaire (Spider Patience)

When exploring the world of solitaire and spider solitaire, you will quickly discover that Spider is one of the most popular and challenging two-deck card games. Widely known as the spider patience card game in the UK and Australia, your goal is to assemble 13 cards of a suit in descending order from King down to Ace. Once a full suit sequence is built, it automatically moves to the foundations.

Choose Your Difficulty: Suits Explained

What makes spider patience so highly replayable is its flexible difficulty. Whether you want a relaxing session or a rigorous mental workout, you can adjust the number of suits:

• 1-Suit Spider (Easy): Played exclusively with Spades. This is perfect for beginners learning how to move stacks, as every descending sequence you build will be of the same suit. Highly winnable.
  👉 Play 1-Suit Spider
• 2-Suit Spider (Medium): The 2 suit spider solitaire card game is played with Spades and Hearts. You can stack a Heart onto a Spade to keep the game moving, but you can only drag multiple cards at once if they match in suit. Spider 2 suit is the most popular mode for casual players.
  👉 Play 2 Spider Solitaire  |  Explore More Card Games
• 4-Suit Spider (Hard): The ultimate challenge. A game of four suit spider solitaire uses all four standard suits (Hearts, Diamonds, Clubs, Spades). Spider 4 suit requires immense concentration, deep strategy, and a bit of luck to conquer. Only for true Solitaire masters!
  👉 Test Your 4-Suit Skills  

How to Play & Valid Moves

• Building Sequences: You can move a face-up card to any column whose top card is exactly one rank higher (e.g., place a 7 on an 8), regardless of suit or color.
• Moving Stacks: You may only drag a stack of multiple cards if they are in perfect descending order and of the exact same suit. This is why mixing suits in 2 suit spider solitaire makes the game tricky!
• Dealing New Cards: When you run out of moves, click the stock pile at the bottom to deal a new row of 10 cards. Note: You cannot deal new cards if any of your tableau columns are completely empty.
• Auto-Completion: The moment you complete a perfect King-to-Ace descending sequence of the same suit, the game will automatically clear it from the board. Clear all 8 suits to win!