Play Relaxed Spider Solitaire

How the Relaxed Spider deal is laid out

The deal is the same as standard Spider. You get 104 cards from two decks, dealt into 10 columns. The first four columns get six cards and the rest get five. Only the top card of each column is face up. The other 50 cards form the stock, good for 5 deals.

Relaxed Spider rules

Pretty Good Solitaire, this site’s main rules reference, doesn’t list Relaxed Spider. The rule change comes from Wikipedia’s list of Spider variants, which says Relaxed Spider does not require all spaces to be filled before a new deal. The rest follows Pretty Good Solitaire’s Spider page.

• Build down by rank in any suit.
• Move a single card, or a run going down in one suit.
• Fill an empty column with any card or legal run.
• Turn face-down cards up as they’re uncovered.
• Deal one card to every column whenever you choose, even if some columns are empty.
• A full King-to-Ace run in one suit is removed automatically.
• Clear every card to win.

How it differs from Spider

Only the deal rule changes, but it changes your choices. In classic Spider Solitaire, an empty column is something you have to give up before every deal. You fill it with a card, often one you’d rather keep elsewhere, just so you’re allowed to deal.

Relaxed Spider takes that cost away. When you deal into an empty column, it simply gets one face-up card from the stock, like every other column. You don’t have to break up a run or park a card first.

Relaxed Spider is hard to find online.

Relaxed Spider strategy

Keep empty columns through a deal. Under the standard rule you’d fill every gap before dealing. Here you can leave a gap open. After the deal it holds a single card, which is often easy to move again, so the column can be clear again in a move or two.

Deal when it helps, not when you’re stuck. In Spider you deal when you run out of moves. Here you can deal earlier, for example when the tops of your columns are high cards that new cards might build on. Be careful: each deal still puts a new card on every column.

Still prefer same-suit runs. The run rules haven’t changed. Only same-suit runs move as a group, so mixed-suit builds still need empty columns to sort out.

Don’t waste the freedom. Dealing with empty columns is easier, but the stock is still limited. Each deal you spend early is one you don’t have when the end game gets tight.

The board above is free in your browser, with unlimited undo, hints and stats saved in your browser. Another game where the stock treats empty columns differently is Grounds for Divorce Solitaire, which skips them when it deals. To compare with the full rule set, see the Spider Solitaire rules.

Rules source: Wikipedia: Spider (solitaire)