Spider Solitaire 2 Suits

How to set up 2-suit Spider Solitaire

Spider always uses 104 cards. In the two-suit game those cards are 52 spades and 52 hearts: four copies of every card in each suit, so four Nines of spades, four Nines of hearts, and so on. On CardCouch the pack is built exactly that way when you choose 2 on the suit control, shuffled, and dealt for you. Each suit has to supply four of the eight completed runs.

1. Lay out ten columns. The first four columns get six cards each and the other six get five, 54 cards in all, dealt face down.
2. Turn the top card of each column face up. The other 44 cards stay hidden until the cards above them are moved.
3. Keep the remaining 50 cards as the stock, face down. They are dealt later in five rows of ten, one card on every column.
4. Leave room for eight completed runs. You never place cards there yourself; a finished run goes there automatically.

With real cards the simplest two-suit pack is the spades and hearts taken from four decks. A common approximation is two ordinary decks played by colour: treat both black suits as one suit and both red suits as the other. For one suit, use eight sets of a single suit (or two decks played ignoring suit); for four suits, shuffle two ordinary decks together.

The rules, as they apply to two suits

Nothing in the rules mentions the number of suits. The full list is in the Spider Solitaire rules; these are the ones that decide a two-suit game.

• Build down by one rank, in any suit. A Seven of hearts may go on an Eight of spades. There is no alternating-colour rule, and no Klondike-style requirement to build in suit.
• Only a same-suit run moves as a unit. Eight, Seven, Six of hearts moves together; Eight of spades, Seven of hearts, Six of hearts does not. Only the cards from the last change of suit downward can be picked up.
• An empty column accepts any card or run, not just a King. On CardCouch, tap a card to pick up the longest same-suit run stacked on it, then tap the column you want.
• Deal from the stock only when no column is empty. This is the standard rule and CardCouch refuses the deal until every gap is filled. The usual explanation is that a free card in a free space would be too cheap; you must pay for the deal.
• A complete King-to-Ace run of one suit is removed as soon as it sits face up on top of a column, whatever lies beneath it. Eight removed runs, four of each suit, win the game.

How 2 suits differs from 1 and 4

The three levels are the same game with a different pack. The levels are commonly labelled easy, medium and hard, but no rule changes between them; only the odds that a card you want to place is the right suit.

Coming from one suit, the habit to break is building on anything that fits. In one suit every build is a natural build and every pile stays movable. In two suits a heart on a spade is legal, but that pile can no longer be picked up above the join, so the move has to be worth it: a build that flips a card or empties a column is usually worth it, a build that merely tidies usually is not.

Compared with four suits, two suits is forgiving in one specific way: there are four of every card rather than two. If one Nine of hearts is buried, three more are in the pack, so a run is rarely blocked for good. Four-suit players count the two copies of each card and plan each run around what is already out; in two suits that bookkeeping matters much less and the game is mostly about column management.

How to win 2-suit Spider

Most two-suit deals can be won with care and Undo. The habits that get you there are the same ones in the Spider strategy guide, applied with two suits in mind:

• Flip face-down cards first. A move that turns a card beats a move that only rearranges face-up cards.
• Build in suit when there is a choice. Before any off-suit build ask whether you will be able to pick the pile up again. If not, look for a better home or treat the build as temporary.
• Earn an empty column early and keep it. The five-card columns are the cheapest to clear. One empty column lets you lift the off-suit tail off a pile and rebuild it in suit; two let you take apart most mixed piles.
• Deal as late as possible. A deal buries every column under a random card. Make every useful move first, and if a gap must be filled to allow the deal, fill it with a King: a King can never be placed on another card, so the bottom of a column is the only place it can live anyway.
• Kings to the bottom, Aces onto a Two. An Ace on top of a column blocks it until a Two appears, ideally of the same suit.
• Use Undo with a plan. On CardCouch Undo is unlimited and takes back a deal or a run removal too. Peek, learn, and undo, but if you are undoing the same move repeatedly, stop and count the cards you still need.

Playing 2-suit Spider on CardCouch

Two suits is the pack the free online game deals when you first arrive. The 1 / 2 / 4 control above the table changes the pack before a deal, your choice is remembered between visits, and a separate best time and fewest moves are kept for each suit count. Every card or run move and every stock deal counts as one move; there is no point score. If you are new to the game, start with the how-to-play guide or look up any term in the solitaire glossary.

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