Play Spider Solitaire — Free

What is Spider Solitaire?

Spider Solitaire is the best-known member of the "spider" family of patience games and one of the most played card games in the world. Unlike classic Klondike, it uses two full decks — 104 cards in total — dealt into ten tableau columns. Your goal is not to build four foundations by suit, but to assemble eight complete sequences, each running from King all the way down to Ace in a single suit. Complete a suit and it is lifted off the table automatically; clear all eight and the game is won. The name is said to come from a spider's eight legs, one for each sequence you need to finish.

What makes Spider so moreish is the tension between freedom and order. You may drop any card onto a card one rank higher no matter its suit, so building a long descending column is easy — but only a run of the same suit can be picked up and moved as a group, and only a clean, unbroken suit sequence can ever be cleared. That gap between "stackable" and "clearable" is the whole puzzle. On vygam it plays instantly in your browser with tap-to-move controls that feel natural on a phone or a laptop, three difficulty modes, an undo button and a timer, so you can settle in for a quick round or a long, patient untangling.

How to Play

Tap a face-up card to pick it up together with any ordered suited run beneath it, then tap a column to drop it. A move is blocked and simply will not happen when:

• you try to place a card on one that is not exactly one rank higher (you cannot skip or repeat ranks);
• you try to lift a group of cards that is not a single-suit descending run — mixed-suit stacks can only be moved one card at a time;
• you tap the stock while any column is empty — every column must hold at least one card before a new row can be dealt;
• you tap the stock after it is empty — all fifty extra cards have already been dealt.

Nothing you do is permanent. Tap Undo to step back through your moves one at a time — including stock deals — so you can always rewind a line that has stalled and try a different order, or start a fresh New game whenever you like.

Spider Solitaire Tips & Strategy

Spider rewards patience and planning far more than luck, especially once you learn to think a few moves ahead. These habits will turn dead-ended boards into steady, satisfying clears.

1. Build in suit whenever you can

   Any card can sit on a card one higher, but only same-suit runs move as a block and only same-suit runs ever clear. Given a choice between dropping your card onto a matching suit or a different one, almost always pick the matching suit — you are quietly assembling a movable, clearable sequence instead of a tangled dead weight.

2. Open an empty column and guard it

   An empty column is the most valuable space on the board: it can hold any card, letting you park an awkward pile while you unpick a suit underneath. Work to clear a short column early, and once it is open, resist filling it with junk — save it to shuffle runs into the right suit order.

3. Turn over face-down cards first

   Hidden cards are what really block progress. Prefer moves that expose and flip a face-down card, particularly in your longest columns, because every card you reveal adds fresh options — while re-arranging cards you can already see rarely changes anything on its own.

4. Don't deal from the stock too early

   Each stock deal drops a card on every column, and it will bury a promising, half-built run if you deal too soon. Squeeze out every legal move first — tidy your suited sequences and empty a column if you can — so the ten new cards land on the best possible foundations rather than on top of your work.

Suits, Decks & Completed Runs

Every mode is played with two standard decks shuffled together, so there are always 104 cards on the table. The difference between the modes is how many suits those cards are drawn from. 1 Suit uses spades only — eight copies of each rank — so any tidy descending column is automatically a single-suit run and can be moved or cleared freely; it is the ideal place to learn the flow of the game. 2 Suits mixes spades and hearts, and 4 Suits brings in all four suits, thinning each one out so that assembling an unbroken King-to-Ace sequence in a single suit takes real forethought.

Fifty-four cards are dealt to the tableau at the start — six each in the first four columns and five each in the remaining six — with only the bottom card of each column face up. The other fifty cards sit in the stock and come out ten at a time, one row per deal, giving you five deals over the course of a game. Each time you complete a run from King down to Ace in one suit, all thirteen cards lift off to a completed pile shown above the board, and any card left beneath them flips face up. Gather all eight completed runs and you have solved the deal — your fastest clear is saved separately for each suit mode, so you can chase a personal best on 1 Suit while working your way up to the four-suit challenge.

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