1. How To Set Up Solitaire Tableau You’ll start by first setting up the tableau, i.e., the seven piles in the middle of the table. The way to do this is as follows: Create the first pile by placing a card face up, followed by the next six piles with a card face down.
2. Solitaire remains the most played computer game of all time, and for good reason. Simple rules and straightforward gameplay makes it easy to pick up for everyone. Solitaire has been part of Windows for more than 30 years, and The Microsoft Solitaire Collection makes it the best experience to date with five different card games in one.
3. Standard Solitaire uses one 52-card pack. Object of the Game The first objective is to release and play into position certain cards to build up each foundation, in sequence and in suit, from the ace through the king. The ultimate objective is to build the whole pack onto the foundations, and if that can be done, the Solitaire game is won.

1. Solitaire Directions Print Out
2. Solitaire Setup

May 23, 2020 How to Set Up Solitaire First, put one card face-up on the table and then put 6 cards face-down next to the first card. As a result, 7 piles are created. Then, put one card face-up slightly lower on the first face-down card and put one card face-down slightly lower on the remaining piles. Solitaire rules and how to play Game setup: After a 52-card deck is shuffled you’ll begin to set up the tableau by distributing the cards into seven columns face.

Spider Solitaire is easily one of the most popular solitaire games on the internet. Continuing our how to play solitaire guides, we aim to show you not only how to play but also how to win this particularly challenging card game.

Play Spider Solitaire now!

Setting Up Spider Solitaire

Spider Solitaire is played with two decks of 52 cards with all jokers removed. As you can see from the picture below, you must deal 10 columns of cards. The first 4 columns of cards have 5 cards that are face down with the sixth card at the bottom dealt face up. The last 6 columns of cards have 4 cards dealt face down, with the fifth and final card on these columns dealt face up. The rest of the cards remain in the deck to be used later.

Rules of Spider Solitaire

There are three possible variants spider solitaire. All three use the same basic rules, but the way the cards can be moved is slightly different for the easier version. It's probably best to explain the rules for the 4 suit version of the game first and then explain the changes for the easier two suit version and one suit version.

Rules for the 4 Suit Version

• A single card can only be moved to another pile if the card being moved is one less than the card it will be placed on. For example any 9 can be placed on any 10.
• Groups of cards can only be moved if they are all in same suit and are in perfect descending order. For example you could move a 10, 9 and 8 of diamonds as a group onto any open Jack.
• If a card that is face down in a column is open it must be turned over.
• Any group or single card you might be able to move can be placed on an empty column.
• You can deal 10 cards from the cards remaining, one to each column if you cannot make any moves. However there must be at least one card in each column when you do this.
• If you have a complete group of cards in one suit in perfect descending order it can be removed from play. For example King of Spades all the way down to the Ace of Spades. Remove all the cards to win the game.

2 Suit Version Rules

• This is common variant of spider solitaire seen in many computer versions. To simulate this using a 2 standard decks of cards just assume that all red cards are one suit and the other suit is all black cards. Now groups can be moved if they are in perfect descending order and they are all in the red suit or black suit. E.g. You could move a 10 of diamonds, a 9 of hearts and 8 of diamonds onto any open Jack.
• If you have a complete group of cards in one suit in perfect descending order it can be removed from play. For example all red cards starting from the King down to the Ace.
• All other rules are the same as the 4 suit version.

1 Suit Version Rules

• To simulate this using a 2 standard decks of cards just assume that all cards belong to the same suit.
• This means you can move any group of descending cards onto another appropriate card. E.g. a 6 of spades, 5 of diamonds, 4 of clubs can be moved onto any open 7.
• Any group of cards in perfect descending order from King to Ace can be removed from play.
• This version of Spider Solitaire is particularly easy, but it's quite relaxing!

Win Spider Solitaire Four Suit

The four suit version of Spider Solitaire is easily one of the most of the challenging solitaire games out there and simply put not every game can be won. You always need some luck! The two suit and one suit versions are far easier and winning is much more common!

• If you are playing it on the computer with an undo feature (or just peeking when playing with two decks by hand), it's often worth looking under a card you are about to uncover to see if that will give you another move.
• Where possible build cards together in their respective suit. This gives you greater freedom in moving the cards as the game progresses.
• When you have two or more open columns it is often easier to restack columns so that they are in their suits before filling those columns with more permanent cards. The idea is to clean up your active columns so they are easier to move later.
• Kings can never be placed on any card, so its usually best to move these to open columns.
• Where possible try to play cards from columns that are closer to being empty. Really the key to the game is getting those empty columns!
• Always try to expose new cards first by moving your current cards around rather than moving them straight to an empty column.
• Always build on higher ranked cards. Often this means that you get more moves. For example move a Jack onto a Queen before moving a 10 onto a Jack.

We hope this guide will help you understand the rules of Spider Solitaire. Enjoy playing!

Further reading

Are you curious about how to play other solitaire variants? Check out one of our guides:

Play Spider Solitaire now!

Start playing unlimited online games of solitaire for free. No download or email registration required, meaning you can start playing now. Our game is the fastest loading version on the internet, and is mobile-friendly.

• Play over 500 versions of solitaire - Play Klondike Turn 1, Klondike Turn 3, Spider, Free Cell, Pyramid, and Golf , among many other versions.

• Undo moves - The chances of winning are between 80 and 90%. However, even if you have a winnable game, if you make one wrong move, it may be the end of your game. If you're stuck, you can undo as many moves as you’d like to get yourself back in the game and win!

• Change difficulty levels - You can play with turn 1 and turn 3 options. Turn 1 is when 1 card is drawn from the stockpile at a time and is an easier version. Turn 3 is when three cards are moved from the stockpile at time, and is harder because you can only play every third card.

• Track your moves and time - If you're competitive, you’ll want to track how many moves it takes to win a game, how long it takes, and how many times you pass through the deck. You then challenge yourself to beat your record times and number of moves. Practice makes perfect!

• Create a free account - If you’d like, you can register an account to save a game and pick up where you left off on any device. We’ll even track all the games you’ve played, including your time to completion and total number of moves. You’ll can see how you get better over time.

• Play the game of the day - Everyday, we introduce a new winnable game. See how you perform compared to other players.

• Play on your mobile phone or tablet - Our game works perfectly on any size phone or tablet device, both in vertical and horizontal orientations.

• Enjoy a clean design and animations - We’ve designed our playing cards to be classic and clean, so they are easy to read as you sequence cards, and our animations keep you engaged. You can also customize designs and playing cards.

If you like classic games, try our other sites: FreeCell Challenge, Spider Solitaire Challenge, Mahjong Challenge, Minesweeper Challenge, and Unscrambled Words.

We also created Solitaire Brain so you can learn some fun facts while you play.

Solitaire rules and how to play

Game setup: After a 52-card deck is shuffled you’ll begin to set up the tableau by distributing the cards into seven columns face down, with each new card being placed into the next column.

The tableau increases in size from left to right, with the left-most pile containing one card and the right-most containing seven. As an example, this means the first seven cards will create the seven columns of the Tableau. The eighth card distributed will go into the second column, since the first column already has its one and only card.

After the piles are complete, they should be cascaded downwards such that they form a “reverse staircase” form towards the right. Ultimately, you will have seven piles, with the first pilie containing one card, the second pile containing two cards, the third pile containing three cards etc. Only the last card in each of the Tableau columns is flipped over face up so you can see it’s suit, color and value. In our game, this is automatically done for you!

All leftover cards after the foundations are created become the “Stock,” where you can turn over the first card.

Goal: To win, you need to arrange all the cards into the four empty Foundations piles by suit color and in numerical order, starting from Ace all the way to King.

Tableau: This is the area where you have seven columns, with the first column containing one card and each sequential column containing one more additional card. The last card of every pile is turned over face up.

Stockpile: This is where you can draw the remaining cards, which can then be played in the game. If not used, the cards are put into a waste pile. Once all cards are turned over, the remaining cards that have not been moved to either the tableau or foundation can then be redrawn from the stockpile in the same order.

Playing the game:

1. Face up cards in the tableau or stockpile can be moved on top of another face up card in the tableau of an opposite color that is one rank higher, forming a sequence of cards.

2. Groups or stacks of sequenced cards in the tableau can also be moved together on top of a card of the opposite color and higher rank.

3. If a tableau column has only face-down cards remaining, the last card is flipped over and can be played.

4. To start a foundation pile, an Ace must be played. Once a foundation pile is started, only cards of that suit can be placed in that specific pile.

5. As cards are surfaced from the stockpile or tableau, and there are no other cards on top of them, they may be moved to a foundation pile if they can be placed in the right order.

6. If a tableau column is empty, you may move a King, and only a King, to that column.

7. Win by moving all the cards to the Foundation piles in the right order.

History of Solitaire

One-player card games are called by some form of the word ‘solitaire’ in some countries (US, Spain, Italy, etc), ‘patience‘ in others (UK, France, etc) or ‘kabale’ in others (Scandinavia, eastern Europe), but both ‘solitaire’ and ‘patience’ are increasingly common worldwide.

The oldest of these, ‘kabale,’ implying something secret or occultic, suggests that the idea of laying out cards in a pattern or ‘tableau’ had its origins in fortune-telling (cartomancy), which became popular in the mid-1700s in Europe. Possibly its original purpose was light-heartedly to divine the success of an undertaking or a vow. If the game ‘succeeds’ or ‘comes out’, the answer is favorable, otherwise not. In France card solitaire is still called ‘réussite’, meaning ‘success’.

In a German games book of 1798 ‘patiencespiel’ appears as a contest between two players, while bystanders and presumably the players themselves wager on the outcome. Single and double-deck versions are described, and seem to be much like one later recorded in English books as Grandfather's Patience. Some references suggest either Sweden or Russia as the place of origin.

Books of solitaire games first appeared in the early 1800s in Russia and Sweden, and soon after in France and the UK. Most seem to have been written by women. A Livre des patiences par Mme de F**** (possibly the Marquise de Fortia), for example, was into its third edition by 1842 and was soon translated into English. Many of the games described have titles commemorating the Emperor Napoleon, such as Napoleon at St Helena, Napoleon’s Square, etc, probably based on the entirely mistaken assumption that Napoleon amused himself by playing solitaire in exile, for which there is no evidence. In fact he most often played games called Pique and Whist.

Dickens portrays a character playing patience in Great Expectations. This was published in 1861, the year in which Queen Victoria’s husband, Albert, who was himself a keen player, died. The first American collection was Patience: A series of thirty games with cards, by Ednah Cheney (1870). Around that time, a British Noble women named Lady Adelaide Cadogan published Illustrated Games of Patience. The last decades of that century were the heyday of patience games, the largest collections being compiled by the prolific Mary Whitmore Jones.

From then on solitaire games settled down into a fairly nondescript existence. From popular literature, print media and movies it soon becomes clear that most people with any interest in card games knew only two or three of the most popular types, such as Klondike and Spider, and whichever one they played they called solitaire without being aware that any others existed. Such further collections that appeared in print were largely rehashes of classic titles, with little or no acknowledgement given to previous authors or inventors. Nothing of any value appeared until 1950 when Albert Morehead and Geoffrey Mott-Smith published their Complete Book of Patience. These authors had clearly studied all the literature, tidied up conflicting rules, and for the first time ever decided to classify games and arrange them in some sort of logical progression. Thus, if you found that you liked a particular game you could then explore others of similar type, and ignore the ones that failed to appeal to you. Throughout most of its history solitaire has been regarded as a pastime for invalids rather than the physically active, and for women rather than men, though it must have been much played by prisoners-of-war who were fortunate enough to have some recreational time on their hands.

All that began to change in 1990 with the advent of Microsoft’s first digital solitaire collection, originally intended to teach people how to use a computer mouse. This same phenomenon caused FreeCell and Spider to both rise in popularity among the general population, as they appeared as free games in later editions of Windows. According to a news item released in May 2020 over half-a-billion players in the past decade alone have played the game. It is now a global phenomenon.

Solitaire Directions Print Out

Note that many games from the late 1800s have you start by arranging the cards in a pretty but complicated pattern taking up a lot of space. These gradually went out of fashion over the last 160 years as tables got smaller and players wanted to spend more time playing than dealing. They could be easily reproduced on a desktop monitor but would not be suitable for play on the small screen of a cellphone. In any case, strictly symmetrical, straight up-and-down layouts are more in keeping with the digital zeitgeist.

Citations and further reading:

1. Das neue Königliche L’Hombre-Spiel, 1798.
2. A collection of the card layouts usually known as Grand-patiences, 1826.
3. Mary Whitmore Jones, Games of Patience for One or More Players, 1890 - 1910.
4. Albert Hodges Morehead and Geoffrey Mott-Smith, The Complete Book of Patience, 1971.
5. David Parlet, Solitaire: Aces Up and 399 Other Card Games, 1978.

News and updates

Solitaire Setup

• 12/16/20 - We've rebuilt our Freecell and Spider games so they now have the same great features as our Klondike game. On those games, you can now play the game of the day and change card desgins. Check them out!
• 12/29/2020 - We added a new tile matching game, Mahjong! If you don't know how to play, there is a guide to instruct you below the game!
• 1/12/2021 - We introduced Hearts, a trick-taking card game, to our platform. While normally played with other people, you can play against the computer. Keeping track of cards and anticipating moves is critical to winning this game.
• 1/20/2021 - Now when you play on mobile, the cards will appear bigger. We hope this will further imporve gameplay and usability for mobile users.