Spider Solitaire 2 Suits: the friendly middle ground

Spider Solitaire 2 Suits is the version most people settle on once one-suit Spider starts to feel a bit easy. You still play with two full packs, 104 cards, but only two suits are used, usually spades and hearts. That one change turns a gentle shuffle-and-stack game into a proper puzzle, without the brick wall that four-suit Spider can be.

It is a thinking game rather than a fast game. There is no clock nudging you, no gambling, nothing to buy. Pour a cuppa, sit down for ten minutes or an hour, and see how many of the eight runs you can build.

Everything on this page is free to play, with no ads, no pop-ups and no paywalls. There is nothing to download or install, no sign-up, no account and no email address needed. Just open the page and the cards are dealt.

The rules, explained simply

How the table is set out

• Two packs are shuffled together: 104 cards, but only spades and hearts (four of each suit's set of 13, doubled up).
• Fifty-four cards are dealt into ten columns. The first four columns get six cards each; the other six columns get five cards each.
• Only the top card of each column is face up. Everything underneath is face down until you uncover it.
• The remaining 50 cards sit in the stock (the deal pile) in the corner, five deals of ten cards.

What counts as a legal move

• You may place any card onto a card one rank higher, no matter the suit. A red 7 can go on a black 8. That is the forgiving part of Spider.
• You may move a group of cards together only if they are the same suit and in order. So 9-8-7 of spades moves as one block; 9 of spades, 8 of hearts, 7 of spades does not.
• An empty column will accept any single card or any same-suit run.
• When you move the last face-up card off a pile, the card beneath it turns over automatically. Uncovering face-down cards is the real job of the game.
• Aces are low; kings are high. Nothing wraps around, so nothing can be placed on an ace.

Dealing from the stock

Tap the stock and ten new cards land face up, one on every column, whether they help or not. There is one strict condition: you cannot deal while any column is empty. Fill the gap first, then deal.

How you win

Build a full run of king down to ace in a single suit and it is lifted off the table. Do that eight times and every card is gone, that is the win. The eight completed runs are why the game is called Spider: eight legs.

How to play Spider Solitaire 2 Suits here

The table is built for comfortable, unhurried play, and every feature is available to everybody. Nothing is locked behind an account or a payment.

• Large, clear cards and readable text, easy on tired eyes, and a zoom control to make the board bigger still.
• Drag and drop, or simply tap a card and tap where you want it to go. Whichever suits your hands and your device.
• Hint when you cannot see a move, and unlimited Undo so no decision is ever fatal.
• Restart to begin the same deal again with what you have learnt.
• Auto Play to finish off a game once it is clearly solved, instead of clicking through the obvious tidy-up.
• Wins, time and moves are tracked for your current game, useful if you like to improve, ignorable if you do not.
• Sound can be switched off, there is a fullscreen mode, and you can change the table colour to whatever is kindest to your eyes.
• It runs in any modern browser on desktop, tablet and phone, the same game on the laptop at home and on the phone in the queue at the supermarket.

If two suits feels like a big jump today, warm up on Spider Solitaire first, or take a break with Klondike Draw 3. You can see the full list on the games page.

Strategy that genuinely works

First moves matter most

• Uncover face-down cards before anything else. A move that flips a hidden card is almost always better than a tidy move that does not.
• Attack the short columns. The six five-card columns are the quickest route to an empty space.
• Prefer same-suit joins. Putting the 7 of hearts on the 8 of hearts keeps the pair moveable. Putting it on the 8 of spades locks both cards in place until you undo it.

Empty columns are your real currency

An empty column is a workbench. Use it to unpick a mixed-suit tangle, to park a stray card, or to give a king a home. But remember you must fill every empty column before you can deal again, so plan the deal before you spend your spaces.

If you are going to fill an empty column deliberately, a king is usually the best tenant, because nothing can ever be placed on top of a king except by starting a new run underneath it.

Before you tap the stock

A deal drops a card on every column and can bury good work. Squeeze out every useful move first: join same-suit pairs, flip what you can, and get a run as close to complete as possible. A deal made too early is the most common way a promising two-suit game falls apart.

Common mistakes

• Building long mixed-suit chains. They look neat and they move nowhere.
• Emptying a column and immediately filling it with a low card. A 3 in an empty column only ever accepts a 2, then an ace.
• Chasing one perfect run while the other nine columns silently clog up.
• Not using Undo. Undo is unlimited here. Trying a line, seeing where it leads and stepping back is how good Spider players learn a deal.

The numbers: how often is two-suit Spider actually won?

Two-suit Spider sits squarely between easy and brutal, and published play data backs that up.

• Solitaired reports a measured win rate of 16.6% for 2 Suits, against 52.29% for 1 Suit (from a sample of 932,087 random one-suit games) and 6.2% for 4 Suits.
• Solitaire.com puts real-world two-suit win rates higher, in the range of 20-35%, with 60-80% for one suit.

The figures differ because sites count abandoned games, undos and restarts differently. The honest takeaway is this: losing a lot of two-suit deals is normal, even for strong players. Treat every completed run as a small victory, not just the full eight.

Spider Solitaire and New Zealanders

There is no published, Aotearoa-specific data on how many Kiwis play two-suit Spider in particular, anyone quoting such a number is guessing. What we do have is solid national research on who plays games here:

• According to the New Zealand Plays report from IGEA and Bond University, 79% of New Zealanders play video games, a 6-point rise on the previous report, and the average Kiwi player is 35 years old.
• The same research found that New Zealand women over 45 are more likely to play than men of the same age, which will surprise nobody who has watched a card game running on the family tablet.
• IGEA's more recent New Zealand research, reported by Scoop, notes that puzzle, board and card games are among the popular genres, and that 15% of players aged 65 and over use games to stay connected with family and friends.

That matches what we see in the mailbag: Spider is a quiet, solo, daily habit, a game for the ferry across the harbour, the wait at the clinic, or a wet Sunday in July.

A bit of history

Spider is one of the best-known two-pack patience games, generally dated to around 1949, and the eight foundation runs are usually explained as the eight legs of a spider. Most of the world met it through Windows: according to Wikipedia's article on Microsoft Spider Solitaire, it first arrived in the Microsoft Plus! package for Windows 98 on 25 June 1998, and by 2005 it was the most played game on Windows PCs, ahead of the shorter Klondike-style Solitaire. The one, two and four-suit difficulty settings that everybody now takes for granted came with the Windows ME and XP versions.

Frequently asked questions

Is every two-suit deal winnable?

No. Some deals genuinely cannot be solved, however well you play. That is part of the game, and it is why the measured win rates above are well below 100%. If a deal stalls, hit Restart or take a fresh one, there is no penalty either way.

Is using Hint or Undo cheating?

Not here. There is no leaderboard to protect and nothing to win but enjoyment. Undo is unlimited, and many players use it as a thinking tool: try a line, see the consequence, step back.

What is the difference between 1, 2 and 4 suits?

Only how many suits the 104 cards are drawn from. One suit means any descending run can be moved as a block. Two suits means you must keep hearts with hearts and spades with spades to move groups. Four suits is the same idea with twice as many ways to get stuck.

How long does a game take?

Most two-suit games run between ten and thirty minutes, depending on how much you think between moves. Nothing is timed against you, the timer is just there if you like to measure yourself.

Do I need to sign up or install anything?

No. No download, no install, no account, no email. The game loads in your browser on desktop, tablet or phone, and every feature is available to everyone straight away. You can read what we do and do not collect on our privacy page.

Can I make the cards bigger?

Yes. The cards and text are large and clear to begin with, and the zoom control makes the board bigger again. Fullscreen mode helps too, and you can change the table colour if a different background is easier on your eyes.

Where do I go next?

Try one-suit Spider to rebuild confidence, Klondike Draw 3 for a different kind of challenge, or browse tips and rules on the blog. Everything on solitaire-free.nz is free, ad-free and here purely for the pleasure of the game.