Spider (solitaire)

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One initial layout in the game of Spider.

Spider is a type of solitaire card game. It is one of the more popular two-deck solitaire games and, while it is difficult, the majority of its games can be won^{[citation needed]}.

The object of the game is to remove all cards from the tableau, assembling them in the tableau before removing them. Initially, 54 cards are dealt to the tableau in ten piles, face down except for the top cards. The tableau piles build down by rank, and in-suit sequences can be moved together. The 50 remaining cards can be dealt to the tableau ten at a time when none of the piles are empty.

The most common software version of Spider is undoubtedly the one included in recent versions of Microsoft Windows, Spider Solitaire. Another Windows version of Spider is Arachnid Solitaire. On Unix operating systems, an early version was developed around 1989 at Sun Microsystems. A version of Spider Solitaire comes bundled with KDE for Linux. It is has been a part of kdegames for some time. Versions for Macintosh and most other operating systems are also available.

There are several variants of spider, such as Relaxed Spider or Spiderette. The former doesn't require all spaces to be filled before redealing, while the latter is played with only one deck.

1 Scoring
2 Chances
3 See also
4 External links

[edit] Scoring

Different software implementations of spider offer alternative scoring rules. The version from Sun Microsystems from 1989 defines the following rules in the manual: 10 points for each initially face down card that gets turned over; 15 additional points for each column where all the face down cards have been turned over (even if you don't manage to get a space); 2 points for each card that is sitting atop the next higher card of the same suit; 50 points for each completed suit removed from the tableau (in which case you do not also score for the 12 cards sitting atop next higher cards). This yields a maximum score of 990. If you win the game with 4 or more completed suits still in the tableau, add 2 points for each suit after the first three. Thus winning with all eight suits still in the tableau yields a score of 1000.

[edit] Chances

Not every game of spider solitaire is winnable, as the final deal may be unplayable. Hoyles' suggests a 30% success rate is reasonable.^{[citation needed]}