Spider Solitaire online: what does thinking ahead actually buy you?
Every solitaire player has two voices. One says "take the move in front of you." The other says "wait, what happens three moves from now?" On spidersolitaireonline.us we wanted to know how much the second voice is worth, so we measured it: game by game, on the exact rules our own games use.
The short answer is: a lot, and far more in some games than in others. In classic Klondike Turn 3, a computer player that sees only the face-up cards won 10.6% of 10,000 deals, while a solver that plans with full knowledge of the cards won at least 66.2% of 1,000. In Spider, our player won 52.8% of one-suit games overall, but 98.1% of the games in which it managed to empty a column before the first deal from the stock. Planning is not a small edge in these games. It is most of the game.
This page opens the one-suit Spider game. Below you will find the gap between simple play and careful play for each game on the site, and links to a page for every Spider level.
Three Spider levels, and where planning pays off
| Level | Our look-ahead player won (a floor) | Share of games with an empty column before the first deal | Won when that happened |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 suit | 52.8% (95% range 51.2–54.3%), n = 4,000 | 1.3% (1.0–1.7%) | 98.1% (89.9–99.7%), 51 of 52 |
| 2 suits | 5.7% (5.0–6.5%), n = 4,000 | 0.5% (0.3–0.8%) | 71.4% (50.0–86.2%), 15 of 21 |
| 4 suits | 0.2% (0.1–0.5%), n = 2,000 | 0.3% (0.1–0.7%) | 33.3% (9.7–70.0%), 2 of 6 |
The right-hand column is the one to remember. At every level, an early empty column lifted our player far above its normal win rate. That is exactly the kind of position a player who plans works toward, and one a player who just grabs the nearest move rarely reaches. The samples are small, so the ranges are wide, but all three point the same way.
One honest note: we did not run a separate "greedy" Spider player, so we cannot put a greedy win rate next to the look-ahead one for Spider. The closest thing to a ceiling is published: Blake and Gent (Journal of Artificial Intelligence Research, 2026) found four-suit Spider 98.5% winnable (±1.5%) for a solver that sees every card. Between our 0.2% and that 98.5% lies everything that planning, patience and Undo can add.
Simple play vs careful play, across the site
For several games we measured two things on the same rules: what a player that sees only the face-up cards won, and what a solver that plans with every card known won. The first is a floor, the second a ceiling. The distance between them is what smarter strategy can buy.
| Game | Simple player (floor) | Planning solver (ceiling, proven wins) |
|---|---|---|
| Klondike, Turn 1 | 42.3% (41.3–43.3%), n = 10,000 | 76.6% (73.9–79.1%), n = 1,000 |
| Klondike, Turn 3 | 10.6% (10.0–11.2%), n = 10,000 | 66.2% (63.2–69.1%), n = 1,000 |
| Yukon | 4.5% (4.1–4.9%), n = 10,000 | 67.0% (62.8–71.0%), n = 500 |
| Alaska | 1.5% (1.3–1.8%), n = 10,000 | 75.6% (71.6–79.2%), n = 500 |
| Spider, 4 suits | 0.2% (0.1–0.5%), n = 2,000 | 98.5% (published, Blake and Gent) |
Yukon and Alaska show the widest gaps: a player who only reacts wins almost nothing, while careful play with full information wins about two deals in three or better. Klondike Turn 1 shows the narrowest. The solver figures assume knowledge of hidden cards, so no human reaches them, but they show how much room there is.
Two games had a purely greedy player, one that always takes a legal move without looking ahead: Golf with the King–Ace wrap used on this site won 22.4% (21.6–23.2%, n = 10,000), and Pyramid with three passes won 25.2% (23.9–26.5%, n = 4,000). For FreeCell, Simple Simon and Scorpion we only ran solvers, so each of those pages shows what careful play reaches and what it cannot rescue.
Choosing where to start
Learning to plan: one suit
With every card in one suit, every run you build can move, so a plan that looks good usually works. It is the best place to practice clearing a column before you deal. Play one-suit Spider.
Where planning starts to matter most: two suits
Now a careless build can trap cards under a run that cannot move. Our player's win rate fell from 52.8% to 5.7% with this one change. Play two-suit Spider.
Planning as the whole game: four suits
Almost every deal can be won in principle; almost none are won by reacting. Play four-suit Spider.
What you get when you play here
- Free, in any modern browser on computer, tablet or phone, with nothing to install and no account or sign-up.
- Large cards and a zoom control.
- Hint, unlimited Undo, Restart and Auto Play to finish a won game. Undo is your best planning tool: try a line, then take it back.
- Drag-and-drop or tap-to-move controls.
- Wins, time and moves for the current game, sound on or off, fullscreen and a choice of table colors.
How we measured it
The spidersolitaireonline.us team ran these simulations in September 2026, on the rules read out of the code of our own games, not on textbook rules.
- Rebuilt each game in Python (version 3.11, standard library only), following our site's code move for move.
- Dealt numbered shuffles, so every result can be repeated deal by deal.
- Used up to three kinds of player. A greedy player that takes moves without looking ahead (Golf, Pyramid); a look-ahead player that sees only face-up cards and never undoes (Spider, Klondike, Yukon, Alaska and others); and a solver that plans with every card known (Klondike, Yukon, Alaska, FreeCell, Simple Simon, Scorpion and others).
- Played every deal to the end and counted wins, losses and, for solvers, deals proven impossible.
- Put a 95% range on every figure (Wilson score intervals) and compared with published research where it exists.
Player results are floors, not predictions of how often you will win: a person with Undo and patience does better. Solver results that use hidden cards are ceilings no person can fully reach. We used an AI assistant, Claude by Anthropic, to help write and review the code and to draft this text. Every figure comes from running the code or from the cited sources, and the team checked them before publishing.
Questions about strategy and the numbers
Does playing faster cost me games?
If faster means taking the first legal move, yes. The gaps above are the cost: in Klondike Turn 3, 10.6% for simple play against at least 66.2% for careful play with full information.
What single habit adds the most in Spider?
Working toward an empty column before you deal. In one-suit Spider our player won 51 of the 52 games in which it managed that.
Are these my odds?
No. They show how much room strategy has, not what any person wins. Your results depend on how far ahead you plan and how freely you use Undo.
Where can I read more?
Each game has its own page with its figures, and longer write-ups go on the blog. Every game is listed on the games page.
By Admin, spidersolitaireonline.us (Solitairen OOD). Research run September 2026.