by Roger Waters

Created on: August 18, 2008   Last Updated: August 22, 2008

Some computer versions of Spider allow the player to see all possible moves involving the top row of cards. The version of Spider at SolitaireInnovations.com allows the player to see all possible moves throughout all the rows in a single glance. Seeing all possible moves everywhere and how they interact can improve strategy when dealing with a complicated layout. When playing Spider a top priority is to get cards of the same suit together. Sometimes this can be very tedious requiring 20 or more moves. The version of Spider at SolitaireInnovations.com allows the player to swap columns to get cards of the same suit together. Thus one simple swap can replace 20 or more moves. The swapping is not allowed unless the result can be accomplished by the traditional method of moving cards. Sometimes you may want to move a column of cards from one column to another. You can see in your minds eye how the cards can be moved but it may take 20 or more mouse clicks to accomplish the task. If you were playing the game by hand, you could simply pick up the column and move it. The SolitaireInnovations.com program takes into account intermediate builds on other columns and spaces in the tableau when it allows a player to move columns of cards in one click instead of 20 or more. The column swapping and moving features allow the player to play Spider with half the usual number of mouse clicks. Another problem with Spider solitaire is that the player has to constantly scan the layout to see if all the cards from one of the suits is present so that these cards might be removed from the layout. The Spider solitaire at SolitaireInnovations.com tells the player when a suit is complete automatically. Sometimes when playing Spider you are not sure it is the right move to uncover a face down card by placing the covering card in a tableau space. You could calculate by hand the odds of something positive happening as a result based on all the face up cards. But, you guessed it

the SolitaireInnovations.com Spider solitaire calculates the probablities based on the face up cards automatically. Creating empty columns in Spider is crucial. The SolitaireInnovations.com Spider solitaire flags cards with orange strips that can be used to a space. In fact you can find any card or set of cards by flagging them with yellow strips. Spider can be won about half the time with the help of the above features.

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