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The original guide for Spider from Culbertson's Card Games Complete with Official Rules by Ely Culbertson.
Cards.Two packs.
Layout.Deal a tableau of ten piles: six cards in each of the first four piles, and five cards each in the others. Turn the top card of each pile face up, all other cards face down.
Object of play.To discard all eight suits from the tableau.
Play.On the exposed tableau cards, build in downward sequence, regardless of suit, (But it is advantageous to build in suit when able.) Ace is low; nothing may be built on it. Kings are movable only to spaces or discard. On baring a face-down card in the tableau, turn it face up. A space (made by removal of an entire pile) may be filled by any available card from the tableau.
The top of each tableau pile is always available. In addition, cards of the same suit and in correct sequence with that at the top of the pile maybe moved with it as a unit. (Such a build-in-suit may also be broken at any point.)
Whenever play comes to a standstill, deal from the stock a batch of ten cards, one on each tableau pile. All spaces in the tableau must be filled before such a deal.
Whenever thirteen cards of a suit lie on top of a pile, in correct sequence from ace at top to king at bottom, the suit may be lifted off and discarded. It is not compulsory to discard when able (there may be an advantage in breaking the suit to aid in tableau manipulation).
The objective of Spider Solitaire is to build all cards of a suit, in order from highest to lowest. Once a sequence has been formed - King of Spades all the way down to Ace of Spades for example - it is automatically moved from the table onto one of the foundations. You win the game when all 104 cards have been moved to the eight foundations and the table is empty.
Spider Solitaire uses two decks of playing cards without the jokers, 104 in total, with 54 cards laid out in 10 tableau columns and the rest placed in the stock. There are 6 cards in the first 4 columns and 5 cards in each of the other 6 columns. The cards in each column are face down except 1 card, which is turned face up at the bottom of each stack.
A card can always be moved onto a card that is one higher in rank regardless of suit, e.g., 4♥ on 5♥ or 7♠ on 8♥. Descending sequences of cards can also be moved together, but only if they are all part of a sequence in the same suit. Any Card or sequence of cards, can be moved onto an empty space. Completed sequences get automatically moved to one of the 8 foundations, other than that the foundations are not involved.
When you have run out of moves to make with what is available on the table, it's time to get more cards from the stock. Click on the stock pile to deal one card onto each of the ten columns and see if that helps.
You have 500 points at the start of the game. One point is subtracted for each move. Completing a sequence adds 100 points. For example: if you've managed to complete four sequences in 90 moves, you'll have 500-90+4*100 = 810 points.
Try to make sequences of the same suit where possible, so you can move these units of cards elsewhere. This will let you uncover a face down card or expose an empty space.
Wherever possible, try and expose hidden cards to give yourself a chance of making a new set of moves.
Spider first got a mention in Ely Culbertson's 1917 book Culbertson's Card Games Complete with Official Rules. But it wasn't until it was included as part of Microsoft Windows that it came to prominence. The game varies in difficulty from fairly easy to really difficult depending on how many suits you use.