Spider Solitaire (1 Suit) | Play Free Online
Spider Solitaire 1-Suit is the gateway to one of the most strategic patience families in cards. Two complete decks — 104 cards — are dealt across ten tableau columns, with the goal of building eight complete King-to-Ace descending runs of the same suit. In the 1-Suit variant every card is the same suit (typically spades), so the suit-matching rule is automatic and you can focus entirely on Spider's core skill: column management. Spider descended from 19th-century European patience traditions, and the 1-Suit version is the standard beginner entry point recommended by every major solitaire guide. It preserves the full strategic depth of the two-deck format — ten columns, a five-deal stock, auto-clearing runs, and the empty-column tension — while removing the suit-color tracking that makes 2-Suit and 4-Suit punishing for new players. Most casual players develop a solid win rate within a few sessions, and the game scales well for experienced players who want to optimize their column sequencing and stock timing.
How to Play
- Two standard decks (104 cards total) are shuffled together and dealt into ten tableau columns. Columns 1 through 4 receive 6 cards each; columns 5 through 10 receive 5 cards each. That accounts for 54 cards in the tableau. Only the top card of each column starts face-up, so the opening board shows 10 face-up cards sitting on top of 44 face-down cards. The remaining 50 cards form the stock pile, which sits in the corner and deals out in batches of ten.
- In the 1-Suit variant every card in both decks shares the same suit — typically spades. This means the suit-matching rule that governs multi-card moves is automatically satisfied for every card on the board. You never need to check suit colors; any descending run is a valid liftable group. This is the defining simplification that separates 1-Suit from the harder variants.
- Build descending runs in the tableau by placing a lower-ranked card on a higher-ranked card. A Six can land on a Seven, a Five on the Six, and so on down to Ace. In 1-Suit the only rule is that the rank must be exactly one lower — suits are irrelevant. Cards stack with each card partially overlapping the one above so you can read the rank progression at a glance.
- Move groups of cards between columns as a single unit. In 1-Suit any descending run is liftable regardless of length. Pick up a run of eight cards and drop the whole group onto a valid target in one move. The receiving column's top card must be exactly one rank higher than the bottom card of the group you are dropping.
- Tap the stock to deal one card face-up to each of the ten tableau columns. The stock holds 50 cards split into five deals of ten. There is one critical restriction: you cannot deal the stock while any tableau column is empty. Every column must have at least one card before the stock tap is accepted. Plan your empty columns around this constraint.
- Completed runs auto-clear. The moment you build a perfect King-to-Ace descending run of 13 cards on any tableau column, the entire run is removed from the board automatically and counted toward your foundation total. There is no manual "send to foundation" step. You need to complete eight such runs to win.
- Empty tableau columns are the most powerful resource in the game. An empty column accepts any single card or any descending run, making it a universal staging area for rearranging buried cards. The central tension of every Spider game is balancing the value of empty columns against the need to keep all ten columns non-empty before dealing the stock.
- Use Undo to reverse any move, including stock deals. Undo is not penalized and can go back as many steps as needed. Use it freely to explore branching lines before committing to a sequence.
- Use Hint when you are stuck. The hint engine surfaces a productive move — typically one that extends a run, exposes a face-down card, or creates an empty column. If no hint appears, the position may be genuinely blocked and undoing to an earlier branch is the right call.
- Win by completing all eight King-to-Ace runs. When the last run auto-clears, the tableau is empty and the game ends with a win. You lose only if no legal move remains and the stock is exhausted — a rare outcome in 1-Suit with careful play.
Strategy
Create empty columns before dealing the stock. An empty column right before a stock deal is wasted — the deal will cover it immediately. An empty column right after a stock deal is leverage you can use throughout the next phase of play. Time your column-clearing moves so the empty columns surface immediately after a stock deal rather than just before one. This single timing discipline separates average players from strong ones.
Build long descending runs even before completing them. A descending eight-card run that ends at Six is not yet a finished foundation, but it is a single liftable unit that can move as a group whenever you need to free the column underneath. The longer your runs, the more flexibility you have to rearrange the tableau later. Treat partial runs as mobile assets, not as fixed structures.
Watch for lock positions early. If two Kings end up at the bottom of columns with eight or more face-down cards above them, the deal is in danger because excavating both Kings becomes the central challenge of the game. Restart without guilt when a deal locks up before the first stock deal — the next deal from the seed library is guaranteed solvable and will present a more tractable opening.
Save the last stock deal for a real emergency. The stock holds 50 cards split into five deals of ten. Each deal covers every column with a new face-up card, which can either rescue a stuck position or smother in-progress runs. Plan to deal the stock when the new cards are likely to help; resist dealing reflexively whenever play slows down. Experienced players often finish a game with one or two stock deals still in reserve.
Expose face-down cards as your primary objective in the early game. Every face-down card is hidden information that constrains your planning. Moves that flip a face-down card are almost always better than moves that shuffle face-up cards between columns without uncovering anything new. Count the face-down cards remaining in each column and prioritize the columns with the fewest buried cards — those are cheapest to excavate and most likely to yield useful ranks.
Build down by rank and ignore color in 1-Suit. Unlike Klondike, where alternating red-black is mandatory, Spider 1-Suit has no color rule at all. Any card can land on any card of the next higher rank. This means you should never hesitate to place a card because of its color — the only question is whether the rank is correct. Internalizing this frees up mental bandwidth for the column-management decisions that actually determine the outcome.
Use undo to explore branches rather than to fix mistakes. The strongest Spider players treat undo as a planning tool: make a sequence of moves, evaluate the resulting position, then undo back to the branch point if a better line exists. This look-ahead approach is especially valuable before dealing the stock, where the consequences of the deal are irreversible without undoing the entire deal.
When to start over: if you have dealt three or more stock rounds and still have more than six columns with buried face-down cards and no empty columns, the deal is likely heading toward a loss. Starting a new game from the seed library is faster than grinding through a locked position. The seed library guarantees solvable deals, so the next game will be winnable with good play.
History
Spider Solitaire is one of the older two-deck patience games, with documented rule sets dating back to at least the 1940s in the United States and the United Kingdom. Its roots reach further into 19th-century European patience traditions — two-deck games with descending tableau runs appear in French and German patience compendia from the 1880s and 1890s, and Spider's structure closely resembles several of those earlier games. Franklin D. Roosevelt is widely cited as a fan of Spider, though the legend predates verifiable sources. Spider became globally familiar when Microsoft included it in Windows ME (2000), Windows XP (2001), and every subsequent Windows release until Windows 8. The Microsoft implementation introduced the now-standard 1-Suit / 2-Suit / 4-Suit difficulty progression that has since been adopted by essentially every digital Spider release. The name "Spider" likely refers to the eight legs (eight foundations) the game requires to win, though older sources sometimes attribute it to the spider-web pattern of the tableau as completed runs are removed and refreshed. Spider is now considered one of the four canonical solitaires alongside Klondike, FreeCell, and Pyramid, and the 1-Suit variant in particular is recommended as the first patience to teach beginners because it preserves Spider's strategic depth without the punishing suit-matching difficulty of the full game.
Extended Guide
The Spider deal lays 54 cards into the tableau across ten columns. Columns 1 through 4 receive 6 cards each; columns 5 through 10 receive 5 cards each. Only the top card of each column starts face-up, so the initial board has 10 face-up cards and 44 face-down cards. The remaining 50 cards form the stock, which deals out in batches of ten — one card to each column — every time you tap it.
You build descending runs in the tableau. A Six can land on a Seven, a Five on the Six, and so on. In 1-Suit the colors and suits do not matter because every card is spades — any card can land on a card of the correct rank above. Cards stack visibly with each card partially overlapping the one above so you can see the rank progression.
Multi-card moves between columns work differently than in Klondike. In Spider you can lift a group of cards as a unit only if the group forms a perfect descending same-suit run. In 1-Suit that means any descending run is liftable; in 2-Suit and 4-Suit you can only lift same-suit runs as groups, and mixed-suit runs must be moved one card at a time. This 1-Suit relaxation is what makes it the beginner-friendly variant.
The stock pile is the engine of Spider. Whenever you tap the stock, ten cards are dealt — one to the top of each tableau column. The crucial rule is that the stock can only be dealt if every tableau column currently has at least one card; you cannot deal the stock while any column is empty. This rule makes empty columns extremely valuable as staging areas and also dangerous to leave open at the wrong moment, because dealing the stock will cover them.
Completed runs auto-clear. As soon as you build a perfect descending King-to-Ace same-suit run on any tableau column, the entire 13-card run is removed from the board and added to the foundation count in the corner. There is no manual "send to foundation" step in Spider — the clear happens automatically. You need to complete eight such runs to win.
Empty tableau columns are the most valuable resource in the game. An empty column accepts any card or any descending same-suit run, so it serves as a universal staging area for excavating buried cards. The tension throughout the midgame is balancing the value of empty columns against the need to keep all ten columns non-empty in order to deal the stock.
You win when all eight 13-card runs have been built and removed — the tableau is empty. You lose when no legal move remains and the stock is empty. Most Spider 1-Suit deals are winnable with careful play; the variant is forgiving enough that the average player can develop a respectable win rate within a few sessions.
The Spider interface puts the ten tableau columns in a fan that fits most phone screens in portrait orientation. The stock count is shown in the corner so you always know how many more stock deals are available. Tap a card to send it to the best legal destination (longest same-suit run target first); drag a card to lift it with its tail. Hint surfaces a productive move when you are stuck, and Undo reverses moves as far back as needed.
Glossary
- Auto-clear
- The automatic removal of a completed King-to-Ace same-suit run from the tableau the moment it forms. No manual move to a foundation is needed.
- Same-suit run (Spider)
- A descending sequence where every card shares one suit. In 1-Suit, every descending run satisfies this automatically.
- Stock deal (Spider)
- Tapping the stock deals one new face-up card to each of the ten tableau columns simultaneously.
- 1-Suit variant
- The easiest Spider difficulty. All 104 cards share a single suit so suit-matching for group moves is always satisfied.
- Empty column (Spider)
- A column with no cards. Accepts any single card or same-suit run, and must be filled before the stock can be dealt.
- Face-down card
- A card in a tableau column not yet uncovered. Revealing face-down cards is the primary early-game objective.
- Run (Spider)
- A descending same-suit sequence of cards. Completing a King-to-Ace run of 13 cards auto-clears it from the board.
Beginner Tips
- In 1-Suit, any descending run is a valid liftable group. Use that freedom to stage complex column rearrangements through empty columns without worrying about suit colors.
- Create empty columns before dealing the stock. An empty column right after a deal gives you leverage for the entire next phase. One created right before a deal is immediately covered.
- Expose face-down cards as the primary early-game goal. Moves that flip a face-down card are almost always better than shuffling face-up cards between columns.
- Partial runs are mobile assets. An eight-card descending run that stops at Six moves as a single unit and can free the column underneath it.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Spider Solitaire 1-Suit?
Spider Solitaire 1-Suit is the easiest Spider variant. All 104 cards in the two-deck shoe share the same suit (typically spades), so descending runs always satisfy the suit-match rule automatically. You can focus entirely on column management — the core skill that carries over to the harder 2-Suit and 4-Suit variants. The deal layout, stock mechanic, auto-clear rule, and empty-column tactics are identical across all three Spider variants.
Why is 1-Suit a good starting point for beginners?
It removes the suit-matching difficulty so you can learn Spider's unique mechanics without being penalized for not tracking suit colors. The ten-column tableau, the five-deal stock, the auto-clearing run mechanic, and the empty-column tension are all present in 1-Suit exactly as they appear in the harder variants. Once you can reliably win 1-Suit games, moving to 2-Suit adds one layer of complexity without requiring you to relearn the fundamentals.
How is Spider different from Klondike?
Three main differences. First, Spider uses two decks and ten tableau columns instead of one deck and seven. Second, the stock deals to every column at once rather than card-by-card to a waste pile. Third, completed runs auto-clear from the tableau — there is no separate foundation pile to send cards to manually. Spider also allows multi-card group moves for any descending same-suit run, whereas Klondike requires alternating colors in moved sequences.
When can I deal the stock?
Only when every tableau column has at least one card. If any column is empty, the stock tap is rejected. This rule makes empty columns simultaneously valuable (as staging areas for rearranging cards) and risky to hold open when you might need to deal the stock soon. Managing this tension — when to create empty columns and when to fill them before dealing — is the central strategic challenge of Spider.
What can I place in an empty tableau column?
Any single card or any descending same-suit run. Empty columns are the most valuable resource in Spider because they let you stage complex rearrangements that would otherwise be impossible. In 1-Suit, any descending run qualifies as a liftable group, so you can drop a long partial run into an empty column to free the column underneath. Use empty columns deliberately rather than filling them with the first available card.
How many runs do I need to complete to win?
Eight. Each completed King-to-Ace run of 13 cards is removed from the board automatically the moment it forms. The win condition is met when all eight runs have been removed and the tableau is empty. With two decks of 104 cards and 13 cards per run, eight runs account for all 104 cards.
Can I undo a stock deal?
Yes. Undo reverses moves one step at a time, including stock deals. If you deal the stock and the new cards make the position worse, you can undo the entire deal and try a different approach first. There is no penalty for using undo, and it can go back as many steps as needed.
Is the game free to play?
Yes. Spider 1-Suit plays instantly in your browser with no signup, no ads, and no in-app purchases. Every deal comes from a pre-validated seed library that guarantees a solvable layout, so you are always playing a game that can be won with careful play.