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It's a difficult game, and it's not always possible to win. But that's what makes "Spider Solitaire" challenging and fun. Can you arrange the ten card piles to create eight 13-card columns? These tips will increase your chances of winning.

* Remember that the first four piles have six cards, but the rest only have five! Start by moving cards off those smaller piles. Once the fifth card is removed, it guarantees a free space for moving any card!

* That first turn is crucial. There's only five chances to deal extra cards from the deck. Plus, some deals won't be helpful, since they'll place a card on every pile, burying some useful cards under something hard to move. So while it's always good to move cards onto cards of the same suit - end the first turn by moving cards onto the other suits! The first turn offers the best chance for seeing what's under the face up cards. On every other turn, that becomes more difficult.

* Try to block cards that won't be needed later, instead of cards that will! This is very important. The game gets easier after completed suits are moved off the boards. (There's fewer cards to worry about, and the odds generally improve for finding a matching card after eliminating 13 cards from the deck.) Protect the longest column of consecutive cards in the same suit - and build down on the short piles instead, trying to expose as many cards as possible to fill in its gaps.

* Use the M key. It plays a magical harp sound while revealing all the possible moves. Sometimes there aren't any, but it's possible that a crucial move was overlooked.

* Know how many suits there are. There's always 104 cards in the game - meaning there's eight versions of each card (on the one-suit easy level) or four of each card on the two-suit "Medium" level. The "difficult" level is very tricky, since there's only two versions of each card. Once one set of 13 is removed, there's only one of each card left for that particular suit. There's a good chance that one of those cards won't appear until the last turn.

* Watch your moves. Waiting to the last turn can actually help set a high score, since points are subtracted for every moved card, and on the last turn every card is finally on the board.

* Free spaces can also hurt you. Clearing out a pile means an extra turn to move something else into the free space, and all free spaces must be filled before dealing the next ten cards. It's even possible to lose the game if there aren't ten cards left to fill all those spaces!

There's a few sneaky ways to get an advantage. Keep hitting the F2 key to start new games! Eventually one of the games will start with a lot of cards that can be moved on that first turn, increasing the odds of winning. And if no cards are moved, the multiple "re-starts" aren't even counted in the "win/loss" statistics!

Also, typing Control-Z will "undo" a move - which makes it possible to eventually peek under all the cards. It counts as a turn, but making the right choice can be a crucial advantage.

Good luck!

Learn more about this author, Moe Zilla.
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