Play Spider solitaire on your own

Spider solitaire is a patience, so the only opponent is the deal. How playing it alone works here, from the table rules to the last card.

Just you and the deal

Spider is a patience, so the table here has one seat and no bot. A computer player at a patience would not be playing against you, it would be playing instead of you. What you are up against is two decks shuffled together and ten columns that mostly start face down.

Nothing is waiting for you either. There is no clock, so a long think before you break up a run costs nothing.

Choosing the number of suits

Opening a table needs a free account. In the lobby you choose the suits and how many deals the game lasts. The pack is always 104 cards; what changes is how many suits they come in. One suit is all spades and usually winnable. Two suits, spades and hearts, is the standard game and the default here. Four suits is hard enough that good players lose more often than they win.

Deals is one or three layouts played one after another, and the table counts how many you won. Start with one suit if you are new to spider: the rules are the same, and you learn what a good move looks like before suits start blocking you.

Making a move

Tap a card to pick it up, and the columns it can go to light up; tap one of them to put it there. Any card goes on a card one rank higher, whatever its suit, but a run only moves together when every card in it is the same suit — so the site will only offer you a whole run to pick up when it is in suit.

The stock deals one card face up onto every column at once, and only when no column is empty. When eight cards from king down to ace in one suit are lined up in a column, the site takes the run off the table for you.

When a deal is over

The deal is won when all eight runs are gone, and the table shows how many moves it took. If nothing is left to do and the stock is empty, the table says the deal is lost. You can also press "Give this one up" at any point to end a deal that has gone wrong and move on to the next.

"Deal another" starts the next layout. When the last deal is finished, the table shows how many you won.

Leaving and coming back

Your board is kept if you close the tab: open the table again and every column is as you left it. A table nobody touches for six hours is cleared away.

You can be at only one table at a time, so leave this one before opening another game.