Spider Solitaire vs regular solitaire: the differences

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What “regular solitaire” means

In the US and Canada, “Solitaire” with no other name usually means Klondike, according to Wikipedia. It’s the game that came with Windows in the 1990s as Microsoft Solitaire, and that inclusion did a lot for its popularity. Spider is a different game. Microsoft added it later, first in the Plus! 98 pack and then in Windows Me and Windows XP.

Both games use a tableau, the rows of columns in the middle of the table, and both have a stock of cards you deal from when you get stuck. After that, nearly every rule is different.

Spider vs Klondike at a glance

Sources: Goodsol and Wikipedia for Spider; Wikipedia for Klondike.

The decks and the layout

Spider uses 2 full decks, 104 cards in all. They’re dealt into 10 columns: 6 cards in each of the first four, 5 in the rest. Only the top card of each column is face up. Everything else waits in the stock. The Spider setup guide shows the deal card by card.

Klondike uses one 52-card deck. You deal seven columns that grow from 1 card on the left to 7 on the right, with the top card of each face up. The rest of the deck becomes the stock.

Two decks change more than the size of the game. In Spider, every card has a twin somewhere in the game. In Klondike, there’s only one of each, so a buried card is the only copy you’ll get.

Foundations vs runs in the columns

This is the biggest difference between the two games.

In Klondike, you move cards off the table onto four foundation piles, one per suit. Each pile starts with an Ace and builds up to the King. Cards leave the tableau one at a time, whenever the next card in that suit is free.

Spider has no foundations. You build everything inside the columns. Once a column holds a full run of one suit from King down to Ace (13 cards), the game lifts it off the table for you. You win when every card has gone that way.

So in Klondike you’re always looking for the next Ace or the next card up. In Spider you’re trying to put long same-suit runs together while they’re still on the table.

Building rules: any suit vs alternating colours

In Klondike, you build down in the columns in alternating colours. A red 6 goes on a black 7. A red 6 can’t go on a red 7.

Spider is looser on placing and stricter on moving. You can put any card on a card one rank higher, whatever the suit, so the 6 of hearts goes on any 7. But only a run in one suit moves as a unit. Wikipedia’s example: a six and seven of hearts can move together onto any eight, but a six of hearts sitting on a seven of clubs can’t.

That’s the trap new Spider players fall into. A mixed-suit stack looks tidy, but you can only take it apart one card at a time. The Spider rules page covers this in full.

What moves together

Klondike lets you move any run of face-up cards as a group, as long as the highest card of the run fits where it’s going. A red 9, black 8, red 7 can move onto any black 10.

In Spider, the group has to be one suit. A 9, 8, 7 of spades moves together. A 9 of spades, 8 of hearts and 7 of spades doesn’t, even though the ranks line up. You can still move part of a same-suit run, which helps when you only need the bottom few cards.

Empty columns

An empty column in Spider takes any card or any run that could legally move. That makes a space very valuable. You can park a card there, rearrange two columns, or sort a mixed stack into suits.

In Klondike, only a King, or a pile headed by a King, can go into an empty column. If no King is free, the space sits there doing nothing.

The stock

Klondike’s stock goes onto a waste pile beside it, and you can play the top card of the waste. Programs and players run it in different ways: you can turn over one card at a time or three, and you may get unlimited passes through the stock or only a few.

Spider’s stock works nothing like that. Each deal puts one card face up on every one of the 10 columns at once. There’s no waste pile. The new cards land on top of whatever you’d built, which can bury a run you were close to finishing. And in standard Spider you can’t deal while any column is empty. If you’d rather drop that rule, Relaxed Spider lets you deal with spaces open.

Which game is harder?

That depends on which Spider you mean. One-suit Spider is a gentle game: every card is a spade, so every run you build can move. Four-suit Spider is a different matter, and the ranking of the hardest solitaire games puts it in the top tier of the Spider family.

Klondike’s challenge depends on its stock rules. Draw-three with limited passes gives you far fewer looks at the deck than draw-one with unlimited passes.

Which to play when

Play Klondike if you want one deck and a familiar shape. The foundations show your progress as you go, one suit at a time.

Play Spider if you like longer games and planning several moves ahead. Spider rewards patience: freeing a column, sorting cards into suits, and choosing when to deal. Start with one suit to learn how runs and spaces work, then try two suits once you win often. When that feels easy, the full 4-suit game is waiting. The beginner’s guide to Spider walks you through a first game.

This site plays Spider and its relatives, not Klondike. Every game here is free in your browser, with unlimited undo and hints.