Spider Solitaire 1 Suit vs 4 Suit (and 2): How Much Harder?

In Spider Solitaire, every extra suit makes the game much harder, and the step from 1 suit to 2 suits is the biggest jump. We played 10,000 deals at each level with a program that follows Poozee's own Hint button and never undoes a move: it won 33.9% of 1-suit games, 0.26% of 2-suit games (26 of 10,000) and none of the 4-suit games. The cards, the layout and the rules are the same at every level. What changes is how often the cards you build can move together.

Below: what each extra suit changes, the numbers from those 30,000 games, which habits made the program win more (and which didn't), and a plan for stepping up from 1 suit to 2 and then 4.

1 suit vs 2 suits vs 4 suits at a glance

How we measured

Every number in this guide comes from the code that runs Spider Solitaire on Poozee. We dealt 100,000 games at each suit count to count the opening moves. Then we played 10,000 deals at each suit count with a program that follows the game's Hint button: it makes the move the hint suggests, deals from the stock when the hint says to, and stops when the hint has nothing left. It never uses undo.

The shuffle depends only on the deal number, not on the suits, so deal number 1 at 1, 2 and 4 suits has the same ranks in the same places, and only the suits differ. The three columns compare the same 10,000 layouts.

The program is a yardstick, not a ceiling. It looks only one move ahead and never backs up, while you can plan and undo. Read its win rates as a measure of how much harder each level is, not as the share of games you can win.

Why each extra suit makes Spider harder

You can put a card on any card one rank higher, whatever the suit, but you can only move a group of cards together when they are all one suit. Finished King-to-Ace runs must be one suit too. (Our guide to the rules covers the rest.)

At 1 suit, those limits never bite: every card you build on is the same suit, so every stack you make can move later. At 2 and 4 suits, an off-suit build is a knot. It gets a card out of the way now, but the stack can't move as one piece until you untangle it.

The opening layout shows the difference. Across 100,000 deals, the ten face-up cards offered the same moves at every level: 6.4 on average, and only 597 deals (0.6%) started with no move at all. What changes is how many of those moves are in suit: all 6.4 at 1 suit, 3.2 at 2 suits and 1.6 at 4 suits. At 4 suits, 17.4% of deals had no in-suit move at all on the opening layout.

What happened in 10,000 games at each level

Here is how the hint-following program did on the same 10,000 deals at each suit count.

• 1 suit: even the games it lost were close. It completed 4.5 suits on average before running out of moves, and only 5.2 of the 44 face-down cards stayed hidden.
• 2 suits: it won 26 games, completed at least one suit in 38.9% of them, and left 20.4 cards face down. That gap, from 5.2 to 20.4 hidden cards, is the 1-to-2 jump in one number.
• 4 suits: it completed a single suit in just 36 games out of 10,000, and left 27.6 cards face down. It also ran out of useful moves sooner, after 54.3 moves on average against 105.6 at 1 suit.

Empty columns follow the same pattern. At 1 suit the program emptied a column at some point in 97.5% of games, at 4 suits in 69.6%. An empty column is the only place you can park cards while you untangle an off-suit stack, so getting fewer of them at the level where you need them most is what makes 4 suits so hard.

Which habits helped (and which didn't)

Next, we gave the program one extra habit at a time and replayed the same deals at each level. The 4-suit column counts games that completed at least one suit, since no version won a 4-suit game.

What helped:

• Build in suit before turning over a card. This is the habit that matters once there is more than one suit. At 2 suits, wins went from 26 to 109: it won 103 deals the plain hint lost and lost 20 the hint won. It also finished 1.01 suits per game instead of 0.63. At 4 suits, games with a finished suit rose from 36 to 81. At 1 suit every build is already in suit, and the change was within chance.
• Keep empty columns empty while you have other moves. The hint will move cards into an empty column just to turn over the card underneath. Waiting until nothing else is left won 112 more 1-suit games (3,505 against 3,393), a small gain but bigger than chance. At 2 and 4 suits it made no measurable difference.

Pro tip: When a card can go on two cards of the next rank up, pick the one in its own suit, even if the other spot turns over a card sooner. On Poozee, tapping a card already does this: it goes to a same-suit card first.

What didn't help:

• Turn over cards in the shortest column first. It did get the first empty column sooner: at 1 suit the program emptied a column before the first deal in 35.5% of games instead of 24.1%. But it didn't win more games at any level (3,415 against 3,393 at 1 suit, within chance).
• Empty a column before turning over a card. No gain at 1 suit (3,422, within chance) and fewer wins at 2 suits, 10 against 26.
• Never build out of suit unless it turns over a card or empties a column. This sounds like the classic advice, and it backfired. At 2 suits the program finished half as many suits (0.33 per game against 0.63) and left 24.8 cards face down instead of 20.4. At 4 suits, it finished a suit in only 2 games. Off-suit builds that dig toward hidden cards still pay. Build in suit when you have the choice, but don't refuse an off-suit move that opens up the table.

Pro tip: "Build in suit" is about choosing between moves, not about refusing moves. If the only way forward is an off-suit build, make it, and plan to fix it later with an empty column.

How to step up from 1 suit to 2 suits to 4 suits

1. Learn the game at 1 suit. With every build in suit, you can focus on the stock, face-down cards and empty columns. Our program won a third of 1-suit games without ever undoing a move, so this is the level where you learn how a game flows.
2. Practice the empty-column habit there. Don't spend an empty column just to turn over one card while other useful moves remain. It was the one habit that measurably helped at 1 suit.
3. Move to 2 suits and expect a big drop. Measured by wins, finished suits or hidden cards, it is the hardest step of the three. Judge your progress by completed suits and cards turned over, not only by wins.
4. Make "same suit first" automatic. Every time a card has two possible spots, check for the one in its own suit. At 2 suits it quadrupled our program's wins.
5. Keep making off-suit moves that turn over cards. Refusing them halved the suits our program completed at 2 suits.
6. Learn to untangle stacks with an empty column. Our Spider Solitaire strategy guide shows how one empty column lets you move a stack made of two runs, and how to swap cards so they end up in suit.
7. Move to 4 suits once you win 2-suit games regularly. Expect long games, lean on undo (Poozee's has no limit and takes back deals too), and treat the hint as a suggestion, not a plan: followed on its own, it didn't win one of 10,000 4-suit deals.

Pro tip: Poozee keeps a separate best time for 1, 2 and 4 suits, so you can keep improving at one level while you learn the next.

Keep playing

Pick your level in Spider Solitaire: the 1 suit, 2 suits and 4 suits buttons sit above the table, and choosing a new one deals a fresh game. If the rules are new to you, start with how to play Spider Solitaire, then move on to the Spider Solitaire strategy guide for empty-column technique. Klondike has its own version of this choice, and our Draw 1 vs Draw 3 guide explains what changes there. For a solitaire with every card face up from the start, try FreeCell.