Spider Solitaire
- Game Type: Rummy
- Age: 12+
- Players: 2+
- The pack: 52 card deck
OBJECT OF THE GAME
Spider Solitaire is one of the most engaging solo-player card games. It is regarded as a game of patience, as it requires you to try to build card piles in ascending order of their ranking, following which it is discarded from the game. You win the Spider Solitaire game when 8 complete card piles are discarded or played out. This is achieved by strategically moving, placing, and dealing with the Spider Solitaire playing cards.
Spider Solitaire can be played traditionally with physical playing cards on a table. Furthermore, the Spider Solitaire card game online is available on numerous websites and mobile applications. This brings the game to your fingertips. In either case, the game is played using 2 standard decks of playing cards, and the same set of Spider Solitaire rules apply.
This blog explains how to play Spider Solitaire:
What is Spider Solitaire?
The Spider Solitaire is an interesting variation of the classic Solitaire. It can be further sub-classified into several variants. The game’s ultimate goal is to assemble 13 cards of a suit in ascending order of their ranking, i.e., Ace to King.
Once a full set of 13 cards (Ace through King) is completed for a suit, the whole set is removed and discarded from the game. The Spider Solitaire card game is won when 8 suits have been completed and discarded from the game.
How is the Spider Solitaire game set up?
Setting up the Spider Solitaire card game is quite simple.
As mentioned, you need 2 standard decks of playing cards used to play the game. Each deck comprises 52 playing cards. Given this, you have 104 playing cards in hand for the game. However, the Jokers are removed from both decks.
You must segregate the cards into 4 piles or columns to set up and play the Spider Solitaire game. A detailed description of each pile is as follows:
Foundation pile
- As the name suggests, the Foundation piles form the base of the Spider Solitaire game. There are 8 Foundation piles.
- You must complete these piles with 13 cards, arranged in ascending order, i.e. Ace to King.
Tableau pile
- There are 10 Tableau piles in the Spider Solitaire game.
- A total of 54 playing cards are used to make these 10 Tableau piles.
- The first 4 Tableau piles comprise 6 cards. The pile’s 6th card is face-up, while others are face-down.
- The remaining 6 Tableau piles comprise 5 cards. The pile’s 5th card is face-up, while others are face-down.
Stockpile
- The stockpile, also called the hand pile, consists of the cards not dealt at the beginning of the game.
- The pile is used to introduce additional cards into the game.
- It typically includes 50 playing cards.
Now that you know how to set up the game, let’s learn to play Spider Solitaire.
HOW TO PLAY
How to play the Spider Solitaire card game?
The following pointers outline how to play the Spider Solitaire card game:
Creating Tableau piles
- First, you must form Tableau piles.
- As mentioned, you must create 10 Tableau piles using 54 cards.
- These first 4 piles will comprise 6 cards (1 face-up card and 5 face-down cards).
- The remaining 6 piles will comprise 5 cards (1 face-up card and 4 face-down cards).
Forming sequence
- As you know, the goal is to form 8 Foundation piles, each containing 13 cards.
- The cards should be arranged in an ascending sequence, i.e. Ace to King.
- You need to move the cards to achieve this.
- You can move the top card of a pile and all face-down cards below it that follow the ascending order of the same suit.
- For example, if a pile includes – 5 cards – 4,5,6,7, and 8.
- The card number 4 is placed face-up, while the others are face-down.
- As per Spider Solitaire card movement rules, you can move the top card (in this case, card number 4) and the other face-up cards that follow the same sequence.
Revealing new cards
- Once all the face-up cards in a pile are removed, the next card underneath them is turned face-up and becomes available for play.
Placing the moveable cards
You can move the cards in two ways:
- Firstly, you can place the card in an empty space.
- Secondly, you can place the card on top of a card that has a higher rank than the bottom card of the unit, regardless of suit or colour.
Moving the King Cards
- You can move the King card only in empty spaces.
Dealing with new cards
- You can deal with a new row of 10 face-up cards when no more moves are possible.
- These cards can be drawn from the stockpile.
- Before you do this, all the spaces in the piles should be filled.
- The final deal happens when only 4 cards are placed on the first 4 piles.
Wrapping it up
Spider Solitaire is one of the most engaging solo-player card games. It is played with 2 standard decks of playing cards. The ultimate goal of Spider Solitaire is to assemble 13 cards of a suit in ascending order of their ranking, i.e., Ace to King. Once the cards are arranged in ascending order, they will be discarded from the game. You win the game when 8 suits have been completed and discarded from the game.


