Spider Solitaire, two suits: longer games, fewer finishes
Two-suit Spider uses the same 104 cards and ten columns as the one-suit game, but now half the cards are spades and half are hearts. You can still stack any card on one rank higher, but only a run all in one suit will move as a group, and only a full King-to-Ace run in one suit leaves the table. That one change turns a relaxed game into a proper puzzle.
We measured it with the same computer player the solitaire-online.nz team used for one suit: no Undo, no peeking at hidden cards. Across 4,000 deals it won 5.7%. The wins it did get were long, 154.6 moves on average against 117.5 for one suit, and a typical game ended with 0.82 runs cleared out of 8.
So set aside a longer sitting for two-suit Spider. It pays to slow down, and Undo is your best friend.
Two-suit Spider at a glance
| What we measured | Two suits | One suit, for comparison | Games |
|---|---|---|---|
| Moves in a won game, including deals from the stock | 154.6 (95% range 152.3–156.8) | 117.5 | 228 and 2,111 wins |
| Runs cleared per game, out of 8 | 0.82 | 4.96 | 4,000 each |
| Games with at least half the runs cleared | 6.3% | 56.9% | 4,000 each |
| Games won by our computer player | 5.7% (95% range 5.0–6.5%) | 52.8% | 4,000 each |
A win takes about 37 more moves than at one suit, and our player got there roughly one-ninth as often. That is less about the deals and more about planning. Our player is weak at two suits, and a patient person with Undo will do much better.
The rules with two suits
- Deal. Ten columns, four of six cards and six of five, with the bottom card face up. Fifty cards in the stock.
- Stock. Each deal places one card on every column. Five deals, no redeal. Try to deal with a column empty and the game flags it.
- Stacking. Any card can go on a card one rank higher, whatever its suit.
- Moving. Only a run in a single suit moves as a group. A mixed run has to be taken apart card by card.
- Empty columns. Any card or single-suit run can go there.
- Clearing. A King-to-Ace run in one suit lifts off automatically.
Where the extra moves go
At one suit, every stack you make is also a run that can move. At two suits, a heart on a spade is a dead end: the cards sit together but cannot travel together. Untangling them costs moves, and so do the empty columns you need to do the untangling. That is the gap between 117.5 and 154.6.
Making each move count
Prefer same-suit stacks
When you have two places to put a card, choose the one in the same suit, even if the other looks tidier. Our player rated a same-suit link ten times as highly as a mixed one.
Use mixed stacks as a stepping stone
Stacking a heart on a spade is fine when it turns over a hidden card. Just know you will have to undo it later.
Treasure an empty column
It is the only way to sort a mixed pile. In our tests, the player emptied a column before its first deal in just 21 of 4,000 games, and won 15 of those.
Take your time over each deal
Every deal lays a card across your columns, often breaking a run you have just built. Squeeze out every useful move first.
Any screen will do
Two-suit Spider runs in any modern browser on phone, tablet or computer, with no download or account. Tap or drag cards, zoom in to read ten columns on a small screen, and lean on Hint, unlimited Undo and Restart. Auto Play tidies up at the end. Moves and time for the current game are shown on screen, and sound, fullscreen and table colour are up to you.
What a two-suit session looks like
Two-suit Spider starts much like one suit, with five rounds of play between deals from the stock. The difference shows up in the middle rounds. Stacks start to mix spades and hearts, and each mixed stack needs sorting before it can travel or clear.
That sorting is what makes a two-suit game longer. It is also what makes empty columns so valuable, because an empty column is where you take a mixed stack apart. A two-suit session often turns on one or two moments where you win or lose a column.
Our player cleared less than one run per game on average, but a person who plans ahead and uses Undo will do much better. Treat each deal from the stock as a checkpoint: before you deal, try to leave as many same-suit runs intact as you can.
How we did the research, step by step
In September 2026 the solitaire-online.nz team measured what happens to a Spider game when a second suit is added: how much longer a win takes, and how much less gets done.
- We began with this site's game code. 104 cards in two suits (we used spades and hearts), ten columns, five deals of ten with no redeal, any card on one higher, only single-suit runs move, any card into an empty column. We assumed you cannot deal while a column is empty; the site warns you, but we did not test past the warning.
- The game as a program. We wrote the rules into a simulation shared with the one- and four-suit versions, so the three can be compared fairly.
- Numbered deals. 4,000 deals from numbered seeds starting at 100001, kept apart from the seeds used to tune the player.
- A computer player. It sees only face-up cards, never undoes, and searches up to 250 positions ahead before each move. At two suits this player is weak, so its results are a floor, not a verdict on the game.
- The run. All 4,000 games were played through to the end.
- Published context. Nobody has published a winnability figure for two suits. For four suits, Blake & Gent, 2026 found 98.487% winnable with every card known, so the low win rate here comes from how hard the game is to play, not from bad deals.
- Error bars. A 95% range would contain the answer 19 times in 20 if the test were repeated. For moves per win it is 152.3 to 156.8. It is wider than for one suit because there were only 228 wins to average.
- Limits. The move figure comes from 228 won games only. Our player's win rate is far below what a skilled person with Undo achieves.
The technical side
We wrote the two-suit study in Python 3.11, with nothing beyond the standard library. All three Spider versions live in spider.py, with the number of suits as a setting. Before each move the player runs a best-first search of up to 250 positions over the visible cards, treating newly turned cards as unknown. Its scoring rewards same-suit links (30 points each) far above mixed links (3 each), rewards empty columns and newly uncovered cards, and penalises hidden cards. runner.py spread the 4,000 games across 19 worker processes on a 20-core machine, and they took about 14 minutes.
The error bars are Wilson score intervals. An AI assistant, Claude by Anthropic, helped write and review the simulation and draft this page. Every figure above came out of the program itself, not the AI, and the team checked them before publishing.
By Admin, solitaire-online.nz. Study date: 18 September 2026.
Short answers before your next deal
Should I move up from one suit?
When one suit starts to feel routine, yes. Expect longer games: our player's two-suit wins averaged 154.6 moves against 117.5. Use Undo generously for the first few games while you get used to keeping suits apart.
How much longer is a two-suit game?
Our player's wins averaged 154.6 moves, about 37 more than at one suit.
Why is it so much harder than one suit?
Mixed stacks cannot move as a group or leave the table, so they need extra moves and empty columns to sort out.
Is a 5.7% win rate normal?
For a player with no Undo, perhaps. Most people win far more often, because they plan ahead and back out of mistakes.
Can I play on a small phone?
Yes. Zoom in and tap to move. Landscape can help with ten columns.
Where should I go from here?
Back to one suit for a relaxed game, or on to four suits for a real test. FreeCell is another game that rewards planning.