Spider Solitaire setup: how to deal the cards

Don’t have two decks handy? Play Spider Solitaire online and the game shuffles and deals for you.

What you need before you deal

You need two ordinary 52-card decks with the jokers taken out. Both Wikipedia’s Spider article and Pretty Good Solitaire (Goodsol) list two decks as the standard. The decks can have different backs. That’s fine, because Spider never needs you to tell the two decks apart.

You also need room. A full Spider layout is 10 columns wide, and late in a game some columns get long. A kitchen table works better than a lap tray. Leave space for three things besides the columns:

• the stock, kept face down in a corner
• a spot for finished runs you take off the table
• a little room below each column so it can grow downward

If table space is tight, overlap the cards in each column so only a strip of each card shows. You only need to read the rank and suit in the corner.

How to set up Spider Solitaire, step by step

This is the standard four-suit game. The steps for the easier suit modes are the same once you have the right cards (more on that below).

1. Remove the jokers and shuffle both decks together. Two decks are thick, so split them into smaller piles, shuffle each, then combine and shuffle again. A quick shuffle can leave cards clumped in the order they came out of the box.
2. Deal one row of ten cards face down, left to right. These start your 10 columns.
3. Deal three more face-down rows of ten on top. Each column now has four face-down cards.
4. Deal one more face-down card to each of the first four columns only. Columns 1 to 4 now have five face-down cards. Columns 5 to 10 still have four. This step is the easiest one to miss.
5. Deal one face-up card to every column. That gives the first four columns 6 cards each and the last six columns 5 cards each, 54 cards in all.
6. Put the rest down as the stock. You should have 50 cards left. Keep them face down.
7. Split the stock into 5 piles of ten. You don’t have to, but it makes the deals easy to count (see “How to keep track of the stock” below).

Count your face-up row before you start. If you see anything other than ten face-up cards, something went wrong in the deal.

What the Spider Solitaire layout looks like

Here is the starting layout, column by column. “Down” means face-down cards and “up” means face-up cards.

So the tableau (the ten columns on the table) starts with 54 cards, and 44 of them are hidden. Most of the game is about turning those hidden cards over.

The longer columns on the left matter. They hold one extra hidden card each, so clearing them takes more work.

How to deal from the stock

When you run out of useful moves, you deal from the stock. Take ten cards and place one face up on each column, left to right. Wikipedia describes it as the remaining cards being “dealt to the tableau ten at a time when none of the piles are empty.”

That last part is a real rule. Before you deal, every column must have at least one card in it. Goodsol puts it as “All tableau piles must be filled before dealing.” If you have an empty column, move a card or a run into it first, then deal.

The Solitaire Laboratory Spider page notes that most, but not all, computer versions use this rule. It also points out that the rule can block a win late in a game, when fewer cards are left than there are columns. If you’re playing with real cards at home, you can choose to drop it. This site also has Relaxed Spider, a version that skips the rule.

How to keep track of the stock

With real cards, it’s easy to lose count of how many deals you have left. A few ways to keep it straight:

• One small pile per deal. Split the stock into 5 piles of ten at the start. Each deal uses one pile. When the piles are gone, so is the stock.
• Staggered piles. Lay the piles slightly overlapped in a row so you can count them at a glance.
• Tokens. Put one coin or button per deal (5 in all) next to the stock and move one aside each time you deal.

Counting ten cards at a time off one big pile is easy to get wrong when you’re also watching the table.

Taking finished runs off the table

When you build a full run of 13 cards in one suit, King down to Ace, you take it off the table. Goodsol says the game removes these runs “automatically.” At home, that’s your job. Lift the run and set it face up in your spot for finished runs.

There are 8 runs in two decks. You win when all of them are off the table. Stacking the finished runs in a neat pile, slightly fanned, lets you count them at a glance.

A run only counts when it’s all one suit. A King-to-Ace run in mixed suits stays where it is.

For the full list of what you can and can’t move, see the Spider Solitaire rules. For a walk through your first game, read how to play Spider Solitaire.

Setting up 1-suit and 2-suit Spider with real cards

The easier suit modes still use 104 cards and the same layout. Only the suits change. Goodsol describes Spider One Suit as using “2 Modified Decks (all cards Spades).” Its Two Suits version is “half Spades, half Hearts.”

The arithmetic for real cards is simple:

• 1-suit Spider: every card is a spade, so you need 8 full sets of spades (Ace to King). One deck has one set, so that means the spades from 8 decks.
• 2-suit Spider: you need equal numbers of spade and heart sets, 8 sets in all. One deck has one of each, so the spades and hearts from half as many decks will do.

Once you have the cards, shuffle and deal exactly as above. Same ten columns, same stock of 50.

Collecting that many decks is a lot of effort for one game. Online, you can switch suit modes with a click: try 1-suit Spider, 2-suit Spider, 3-suit Spider or the standard 4-suit game.

Common setup mistakes

A few errors come up again and again with real cards:

• Giving every column six cards. Only the first four get six. The rest get five. If you deal six to every column, your stock comes up short.
• Turning up too many cards. Only the top card of each column starts face up.
• Dealing from the stock with an empty column. Fill the gap first.
• Shuffling each deck on its own. Mix both decks together into one pile before you deal.
• Forgetting the jokers. A joker in the deal throws off every count.

If your stock count comes out wrong, the deal is off somewhere. Gather the cards and start again rather than trying to patch it.