Spider — 4 Suits· CardHearth
How to play, tips & FAQ
The expert's Spider
All four suits, two full decks, ten columns — 4 suit Spider is the game 1- and 2-suit players graduate into and never quite conquer. The rules are unchanged: build down in any suit, move only same-suit runs as a unit, complete eight King-to-Ace runs to win. What changes is that almost every legal move now has a hidden cost.
How to actually win
Wins at 4 suits are engineered, not found. Count your five stock deals and treat each as a deadline: before dealing, tidy every column you can, because the deal buries all ten at once. Build the longest same-suit runs you can early, even at the price of foundation-tempo, since long runs survive deals intact. Open columns are everything — use them to peel off-suit caps from your best stacks, and don't fill them casually. And use the deal number: replaying a brutal deal teaches more about Spider than ten fresh ones.
Frequently asked questions
How hard is 4 suit Spider Solitaire really?
It is widely considered one of the hardest popular solitaires. Only same-suit runs move together, and with all four suits across two decks, win rates for strong players are commonly in the single digits to low teens without undo. Generous use of undo to explore lines is considered fair play here.
Are some 4-suit deals impossible?
Yes — a meaningful share of random 4-suit deals cannot be won even with perfect play. If a deal keeps beating you, note its number from the HUD: you can replay it to try new lines, or share it to see if a friend fares better.
What separates good 4-suit players?
Discipline about empty columns. Experts treat an open column as the most valuable object in the game — they spend several moves to create one, use it to re-sort mixed stacks into suits, and almost never deal from the stock while a promising dig is available.
Too brutal today? Step down to 2 suit Spider or 1 suit Spider — or unwind withFreeCell, where nearly every deal is winnable.
📖 1, 2 or 4 suits — which to play