Spider Solitaire 4 Suits — Play Online Free

How to play 4-suit Spider Solitaire

Four-suit Spider is Spider Solitaire as you would play it with real cards: two ordinary 52-card decks shuffled together, 104 cards in all, with two copies of every card. The goal doesn't change — build eight runs from King down to Ace in one suit and the table clears — but with Spades, Hearts, Diamonds and Clubs all in play, getting cards into suit is the whole battle.

The rules in brief

• The deal: ten columns get 54 cards — six in each of the first four, five in the rest — with the last card of each column face up. The 50-card stock gives you five more deals of ten.
• Building: any card can go on a card one rank higher, of any suit. A 4♦ can go on a 5♦, 5♥, 5♣ or 5♠.
• Moving groups: only cards that run down in one suit move together, like J♣ 10♣ 9♣.
• Empty columns take any card or any same-suit run.
• Dealing: the stock puts one card on every column. As in Windows Spider, you can't deal while a column is empty, unless too few cards are left to fill them all.

What four suits changes

For any card, there are eight cards one rank higher in the deck, and only two of them are in its own suit — either of which may be buried. Most of your early builds will be mixed, and mixed runs can't travel. So four-suit Spider is less about finding a legal move and more about sorting: taking tangled columns apart and putting them back together in suit, a few cards at a time.

Unlike Klondike, color means nothing in Spider. A red 7 on a red 8 is fine, and so is a black one — only the suit matters. That makes Spades and Clubs, or Hearts and Diamonds, easy to mix up at a glance. If you catch yourself misreading suits, set Card colors to Four colors in Settings, and each suit gets a color of its own.

Playing on this page

This page always deals four suits. Drag a card or run, or tap it to send it to its best spot. Press H for a hint, D to deal and Ctrl+Z (⌘Z on a Mac) to undo.

Four-suit Spider strategy

1. Turn over cards before anything else. In four suits you rarely have the in-suit move you want, so seeing more cards is worth a lot. A move that flips a face-down card usually beats one that only looks tidy.
2. Empty a column, then guard it. An empty column is your best tool for sorting mixed runs. Work toward one from the start, and think twice before you drop a card into it that you can't move out again.
3. Sort with the empty column. To fix a mixed run, park its last same-suit piece in the empty column, move the card above it onto a match of its own suit, then bring the parked cards back on top. Repeat, and a messy column becomes one long run you can move.
4. Protect your clean runs. A long run in one suit is valuable because it can move. An off-suit card on the end of it pins it in place until that card leaves. If the card has somewhere else to go, send it there.
5. Remember there are only two of each card. If one Q♥ is buried under a pile of mixed cards, the other one is the only quick home for your J♥ — so don't cover it carelessly.
6. Prepare for every deal. Before you tap the stock, finish the runs you can and turn over every card you can reach. Afterward, ten new cards will be sitting on top of your work.
7. Explore with Undo. Undo is unlimited and costs a single point, so try a line and back out if it leads nowhere. The Hint button never peeks at face-down cards, which makes it an honest second opinion.

Scoring in four-suit Spider

The score works just as it does at the other levels, following classic Windows Spider:

A win is worth 1,300 minus the moves you made. Four-suit games take a lot of sorting, and every sorting move costs a point, so expect lower winning scores than at one or two suits. Rather than comparing across levels, compare yourself with yourself: this page keeps its own best score, fastest time and fewest moves, plus your wins, streaks and daily-deal results.

How hard is four-suit Spider?

Four suits is the hardest of Spider's three usual levels, and one of the tougher solitaire games around. Some deals can't be won by any line of play, and many that can take real patience. Losing a game you played well is normal here — it happens to everyone.

It helps to measure progress in smaller steps than wins: a column cleared, a run finished, a game that got further than the last one. A few habits help most:

• Slow down before every deal and look over the whole table.
• Keep an empty column in hand for as long as you can.
• Use Undo freely while you learn, and notice which kinds of moves you end up taking back.

If four suits feels overwhelming, there's no shame in stepping down. Two-suit Spider teaches the same skills with half the tangle — try the 2-suit page — or play one suit on the main Spider Solitaire page to learn the basics.