# Spider

Written by Jonathan Blandford

## Setup

Type of Deck | Double Deck
Stock | Top left pile. Deck placed here after dealing onto Tableau. Clicking deals one card face up to every pile.
Foundation | Top eight piles. Only used to hold sequences of cards going down from King down to Ace once completed.
Tableau | Ten piles. Four piles (piles 1, 4, 7 and 10) get dealt 5 cards down and one card up while rest of the piles get dealt 4 cards down and one card up. Cards can be built down regardless of suit. Sequences of cards in the same suit can be moved as a unit. Empty piles can be filled with any card or movable unit.

## Goal

To have eight sequences of cards going down from King down to Ace in the foundation.

If you want an extremely difficult challenge, do not move completed sequences of cards to a foundation. You can also win by leaving the same eight sequences in the tableau. This is harder because there are fewer empty piles available. In fact, it is nearly impossible.

## Rules

Build down regardless of suit. Sequences of cards in the same suit can be moved as a unit. Empty piles can be filled with any card or legal sequence.

Clicking on the Stock pile at any time deals a card face up to every pile. However, all piles must be non-empty. If an empty pile exists, an error message will appear.

A sequence of cards going down from King down to Ace can be moved to a foundation pile. Once there, these cards are no longer in play.

## Options

There are three possible types of deck. Each deck has 104 cards.

One Suit

- The deck is an octuple deck of Spades only. This is the simplest of the spider decks and a good way to learn the basics.

Two Suits

- The deck is a quadruple deck of Hearts and Spades only. There are four complete sequences of cards for each suit. This is not quite as diabolical as the standard four suit spider deck.

Four Suits

- The deck is a standard double deck. There are two complete sequences of cards for each suit. This is the standard Spider deck. It is also the most difficult.

Many traditional implementations of Spider do not use a foundation and simply remove completed sequences of cards. This has no impact upon game play.

## Scoring

For every sequence in suit, points given is (length of sequence − 1).

Maximum possible score: 96

## Strategy

If at first you don't succeed, don't become addicted. Build in suit whenever possible, but expose as many cards as you can.