Spider Solitaire, 2 suits: five deals, and every one covers your work
Here is the difference between a Klondike stock and a Spider stock in one sentence. In Klondike Turn 3, on our home page, you can go round the stock as often as you like, but it hands you three cards at a time and lets you use only the top one. In Spider, you never choose from the stock at all: each of its five deals drops one card on all ten columns, and when the fifth deal is gone there is nothing left to draw.
With two suits, spades and hearts, that one-way stock meets a table where runs only move if they are one suit. Our look-ahead bot, which sees only face-up cards and never undoes, won 5.7% of 4,000 deals (95% range 5.0%–6.5%). For scale, our simpler rule-list Klondike bot won 10.6% at Turn 3 (10.0%–11.2%) and 42.3% at Turn 1 (41.3%–43.3%), each over 10,000 deals. These are floors, and a weak one here: our two-suit Spider bot is known to be much weaker than a good player.
At a glance: Spider with two suits
| Measure (bot, no peeking, no undo) | Result | 95% range | Deals |
|---|---|---|---|
| Games won | 5.7% | 5.0–6.5% | 4,000 |
| Suits completed per game (of 8) | 0.82 | 0.77–0.88 | 4,000 |
| Games with at least 4 suits completed | 6.3% | 5.6–7.1% | 4,000 |
| Moves in a won game (deals included) | 154.6 | 152.4–156.8 | 228 wins |
| Bot emptied a column before the first deal | 0.5% | 0.3–0.8% | 4,000 |
| Win rate when it did | 71.4% | 50.0–86.2% | 21 |
We ran no solver for two-suit Spider and know of no published winnable share for it, so we cannot say how many of these deals a perfect player could win. The one-suit game gave the same bot 52.8% (51.2%–54.3%, 4,000 deals).
How the stock shapes a two-suit game
At Turn 3, Klondike's stock is a filter: the card you want can sit second in a group of three, lap after lap, and our bot needed 3.81 stock passes per win (3.73–3.90) against 2.34 at Turn 1 (2.32–2.36). Spider's stock is not a filter; every card it deals is playable the moment it lands. Its cost is different. Each deal drops a card of either suit onto your runs, and with two suits roughly half of those land on the wrong color, splitting a run you can no longer lift as one piece.
That is why an empty column before the first deal is so valuable, and so rare: 0.5% of games, with a win rate of 71.4% in those few (only 21 deals, hence the wide range). We did not test other stock rules, so we cannot put a number on what five one-way deals cost compared with, say, a recyclable stock.
Spider rules on this site
- Cards: 104, spades and hearts.
- Table: ten columns (four of 6, six of 5), top card face up.
- Stock: 50 cards, five deals of one card per column, no redeal.
- Empty columns: take any card; you cannot deal while one is empty.
- Building: any suit on one rank higher; only same-suit runs move as a group.
- Win: eight complete King-to-Ace suits, removed automatically.
Handling a stock you cannot recycle
Prefer same-suit builds
A heart on a spade is legal, but it welds the run. When you have a choice, build in suit, even if the other move looks faster.
Use each deal as a checkpoint
Before clicking, ask whether anything else can still be tidied. After the click, you are playing a new, messier table.
Fill gaps with a purpose
Since dealing onto an empty column is not allowed, put something there first, ideally a King or a clean run that will not need to move again.
Undo is your look-ahead
Our bot never undoes. You can: try a line, look, and rewind before you commit to a deal.
What we can and cannot compare
It is tempting to rank every game on the site by one number, but the numbers come from different players. The Klondike figures on the home page come from a simple rule-list bot; the Spider figures come from a look-ahead bot that searches 250 positions per turn. Both see only face-up cards and never undo, so both are floors, but they are not the same floor. Comparing 5.7% here with 10.6% for Klondike Turn 3 tells you both games are tough for a program that cannot plan far; it does not tell you which is harder for you.
What the two-suit table does show clearly is the collapse from one suit. With the same bot, the same stock rule and the same 4,000-deal sample size, the win rate fell from 52.8% to 5.7% and completed suits from 4.96 to 0.82 per game. Nothing about the stock changed between those runs; only the number of suits did. So in Spider, far more than in Klondike, the colors of the cards drive the result, and the draw rule is a fixed background.
Wins that did happen were long: about 154.6 moves including the five deals, against 117.5 in the one-suit game.
Playing on solitaire-turn-3.com
Two-suit Spider is free in any current browser on computer, tablet or phone, with no sign-up. Hint, unlimited Undo, Restart and Auto Play are built in, together with zoom, fullscreen, drag or tap moves, a record of wins, time and moves, and options for sound and table color.
How the figures were made
The solitaire-turn-3.com team ran these tests in September 2026 using the Spider rules read from this site's own code.
- Python 3.11, standard library only.
- Seeds 100001 to 104000, separate from the seeds used to set the bot's weights.
- Bot: 250-position look-ahead over visible cards; unseen cards treated as unknown.
- Ranges: Wilson 95% intervals for percentages, normal intervals for averages.
- Not done: no solver, and no alternative stock rules.
Claude, an AI assistant by Anthropic, helped write and review the code and draft this text. It produced no figures, and the team checked every number against the code's output.
Two-suit questions
Is 5.7% my chance of winning?
No. It is what a simple bot with no undo managed. People who plan and rewind win far more often; we have no human figure for this game.
Why so much lower than one suit?
Only same-suit runs move, so mixed runs pile up. The bot completed 0.82 suits per game here against 4.96 with one suit.
Where next?
Try one suit, four suits, or the three-card draw of Solitaire Draw 3. The full list is on the games page; longer reads are on the blog.
By Admin, solitaire-turn-3.com (Forty Media). Research run September 2026.