Why Spider Solitaire?

Welcome to my blog on Spider Solitaire.

In an age dominated by Netflix, Fortnite, Randy Rainbow songs, internet memes, griping about the NBN, checking Twitter feeds every 5 minutes, Tetris99 (okay, even I have to admit the concept is kinda cool) and what-not, it seems Spider Solitaire (indeed most abstract mathematical games in general) is becoming a lost art. If you’ve never heard of the game you’re not alone. I’ve even come across one dude at work who didn’t even know what Sudoku was one year after it became a thing. But I digress.

Like most armchair critics, I consider myself to be pretty good at Spider Solitaire. But I also have some concrete data: I can win about half the time on four-suit level without undoing moves. I know very few people who have claimed (let alone proved) to be expert at Spider Solitaire. Certainly one can google basic strategies easily enough, but I find most of it to be superficial. For instance, Joe Bloggs might show a complete game from start to finish, but the game turned out to be ridiculously easy. Jane Citizen might say that empty columns are better than smoking, it’s always better to build sequences in the same suit and bears defecate in the woods. But that fails the Duh Test since every man, dog and millipede on the planet could have figured that out by themselves. I believe Spider Solitaire is a lot deeper than the trash advice I found on the internet. Hence this blog was born.

Okay, so what is Spider Solitaire?

You have made it to the final table of the World Series of Spider Solitaire. You look at the left-most column. The Seven of Hearts, then the Deuce of Clubs, followed by five face-down cards. After studying the rest of the layout you announce that you are all-in! The audience gasps with horror: is this guy on tilt? Unperturbed, you shift the Seven and Deuce out of the way and expose the hidden cards one by one. The last card gives you a straight flush in diamonds, which you immediately move onto the foundations. You take a large bite of your last Oreo. Crunch. Victory is mathematically certain and the rest is a formality. You take home an $8 million pay cheque and a gold bracelet and the good guys live happily ever after … or something like that.

Okay that’s probably not the most accurate description of how the game is played, but I do believe Spider is the Cadillac of Solitaire games.

To be continued …