Spider Solitaire (1 suit): a coin-flip game that rewards a little patience

One-suit Spider is where most people meet Spider Solitaire, and it's a gentle introduction. Every card is a spade, so any run you build can move as a group. The two-deck layout looks intimidating, but the game is far more winnable than it appears.

We wanted to know what a casual player should expect, so we had a computer player tackle 4,000 deals using only the cards it could see, with no Undo. It won 52.8% — a little better than a coin toss. And that's a modest player. With Undo and a bit of forward thinking, you have room to do better.

One-suit Spider in numbers

The last row is a helpful reality check. solitairex.io lists one-suit Spider among its "quick wins" with a 70–84% win rate for players there. They don't explain how the range was measured, so treat it loosely — but it fits the picture that real people using Undo win more often than our no-undo bot.

The rules of Spider as we play it

• Two decks, 104 cards. In this version all of them are spades.
• Ten columns. The first four get six cards, the rest get five. Just the last card in each column is showing.
• A 50-card stock. Each click deals one card onto every column, face up. That's five deals in all, with no redeal.
• Building. Any card can go onto a card one rank higher. With one suit, every run you build is a proper suit run, so it can move as a unit.
• Empty columns take any card or run.
• Completing a suit. A full run from King down to Ace is cleared off the table automatically. Clear all eight and you've won.

The game warns you if you try to deal from the stock while one of your columns is empty.

What the casual baseline tells you

Our bot is not a clever player. It looks a short way ahead over the cards it can see, prefers moves that build tidy runs and turn over hidden cards, and deals from the stock when it can't improve anything. It never takes a move back. Even so, it completes almost five of the eight suits on average and wins more than half its games.

The most striking result is what happened in the rare games where the bot cleared a whole column before its first deal from the stock. That happened in only 1.3% of games — 52 of them — but it won 51. An early empty column is close to a winning ticket.

Tips that turn a coin flip into a winning habit

Hunt for an empty column early

Look at the five-card columns first. If you can clear one before you touch the stock, our numbers say you're in excellent shape. Even later in the game, an empty column is the most flexible space you'll ever have.

Turn over hidden cards whenever you can

Every face-down card is information you don't have. Given the choice between tidying a run and uncovering a card, uncovering usually pays more.

Build long, clean runs

With one suit, any correct sequence can move together, so long runs are portable. Park them on the highest card available so they don't block a column you need.

Deal only when you're done

Each deal from the stock drops a card on every column, burying your work. Make every useful move first, and fill any empty column before you deal.

Use Undo to explore

Our bot never undoes and still wins more than half its games. You're allowed to, so when two moves look similar, try one and step back if it goes nowhere.

Where casual Spider games are lost

• Dealing from the stock with useful moves still waiting on the table.
• Stacking cards on a low card and blocking a column for the rest of the game.
• Filling an empty column with a single loose card instead of a run.
• Giving up after the fourth or fifth deal — many games are won only at the very end.

Playing Spider here

It's free, in your browser, on a computer, tablet or phone. Nothing to install, and no account or email needed. The cards are big and readable, and zoom makes the board bigger still, which helps with ten columns on a small screen. You get Hint, unlimited Undo, Restart, and Auto Play to finish a won game; drag cards or tap to move them; and wins, time and moves for the current game are on screen. Turn the sound off, go fullscreen or change the table color whenever you like. No gambling and nothing to purchase.

When one suit feels too easy, step up to Spider with two suits, and then four suits if you want the full challenge. FreeCell is the natural next stop if you enjoy building runs.

The research behind these numbers, step by step

The play-solitaire-free-online.us team at Solitairen OOD ran this test in September 2026 on Spider exactly as it plays on this site.

1. Rules from our game code. 104 cards in ten columns of 6,6,6,6,5,5,5,5,5,5; a 50-card stock dealt one card per column with no redeal; any card on one rank higher; only same-suit runs move together; any card into an empty column; full suits removed automatically. One rule was assumed: that you can't deal onto an empty column. The game shows a warning at that point, but we didn't confirm in a browser that it blocks the deal.
2. Game rebuilt in code. We programmed Spider so the bot could play it, using spades for all 104 cards in the one-suit version.
3. Numbered deals. Seeds 100001 to 104000. We deliberately avoided seeds 1 to 30, which we'd used to tune the bot, so the reported games played no part in setting it up.
4. The player. A bot that sees only face-up cards, looks up to 250 positions ahead each turn, and never undoes. That makes it a floor for what a careful person can do.
5. Running it. 4,000 complete games.
6. Published comparison. Blake & Gent (2026) studied four-suit Spider with every card known (98.5% winnable) and a smaller one-deck cousin, but not one-suit Spider with two decks, so there's no direct published match for this game. We also didn't build a perfect-knowledge solver for Spider.
7. Margin of error. The 95% range means the bot's true win rate is almost certainly between 51.2% and 54.3%.
8. Limits. The "51 of 52" figure comes from only 52 games, so the exact rate is uncertain even though the message is clear. And our bot is a floor: a patient player with Undo should do better.

The code behind the test

The Spider code is spider.py, written in Python 3.11 with only the standard library. On each turn the bot runs a best-first look-ahead of up to 250 positions over the cards it can see, treating any newly turned card as unknown. It scores positions by same-suit links, any-suit links, hidden cards, empty columns and freshly uncovered cards, then plays toward the best one. runner.py split the 4,000 games across 19 worker processes on a 20-core computer, and the run took about 21 minutes. The 95% ranges come from Wilson score intervals, a standard method for percentages.

We used Claude, an AI assistant from Anthropic, to help write and review the Spider code and to draft this page. The numbers are not AI output: each one came from running the bot, and we checked our approach against the published research where it applies.

By Admin, play-solitaire-free-online.us (Solitairen OOD). Research dated September 18, 2026.

Questions new players ask

Is one-suit Spider easy?

It's the easiest Spider, not a walkover. Our no-undo bot won just over half its games. With Undo, most players can do better.

What counts as a good game if I don't win?

Our bot averaged about five completed suits per game. If you're clearing four or more regularly, you're playing well.

Why can't I deal from the stock sometimes?

The game warns you when a column is empty. Put a card or run into every empty column first.

How many moves does a one-suit win usually need?

Our bot's wins took about 118 moves, counting each deal from the stock as a move.

When should I try two suits?

Once you're winning one-suit games more often than not. Be ready for a big step up: the same bot's win rate fell to 5.7% with two suits.