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What percentage of spider solitaire games are winnable?

I've been playing spider solitaire (one of the games that comes free with Windows) often and I was wondering if every single hand is winnable. Are there some hands that can't be solved, regardless of how good a person's strategy is?

I know that the one-suit game probably has a very high (if not 100%) winnability rate. However, I've been playing on two suits and have been getting like a 27% success rate. Granted, my strategy is not that great - but I'm curious how much it can be improved. Also, what about four suits?

Probability wise, how many two and four suit spider solitaire games are winnable?

16 Answers

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  • Anonymous
    1 decade ago
    Favorite Answer

    i also play spider for windows and four suits comes out around 1 in 8 games the two deck game comes out around 1 in 4 so far i have completed and numbered all games from 1 to 1440 and still playing every time you play start at 1 and keep going back to the same game till you get it this will improve your strategy

  • 6 years ago

    If you have unlimited undo's going all the way back to the beginning i think its a very high percentage. I just started playing again 4 suited, two decks and being very persistent have won the first 17 in a row. One game took me 5 hours of playing with tons of undos but i had a perfect record so i didn't want to ruin it! It occurred to me that there could be an unwinnable game if the last draw is unplayable - say all odd numbers. But then I had a case where a draw was like that but one of the piles had a last card that fit the odd number draw card so I could move the two cards together and thereby keep going.

    This is like Fermat's last theorem but I'll say it: all games are winnable. Can't prove it tho

  • Anonymous
    4 years ago

    Spider Solitaire Two Suit

  • Kenny
    Lv 4
    1 decade ago

    Two Suit Spider win rates run around 50% according to the first link below. The 100% win rates shown in this link are probably bogus. But I would guess that the percentage of two suit games that are winnable is in the high ninties. Win rates for regular Spider run around 40% according to the second link below. Probably about 70% of regular Spider games are winnable. The third link below has a version of regular Spider for which every game is winnable. Tips for winning at regular Spider can be found at the fourth link below.

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  • 5 years ago

    Two Suit Spider Solitaire

  • 6 years ago

    I have played 3977 games with a percentage of 82%. I generally won't play a game past an hour.

    I am sure that the actual number is higher, but how much higher? 92%? 95%?

    There is no way all games are winnable with the number of cards and the order of those cards that can be uncovered.

  • 7 years ago

    I have played many hundreds of games, using only two suits. My winning percentage is pretty consistent at 87.5 % (around 7 out of 8). Yes, I do go all the the way back and retry if I don't win the first time around. I quit if I don't win within an hour (usually up to 4-5 restarts, as necessary).

  • 5 years ago

    I believe it's close to 100% for even the 4 suit (most difficult) option. I recently had 79 wins in a row, then I updated to Windows 10 and it reset my games. Since then, I've had another 17 in a row. As mentioned above, I also make liberal use of the undos (all the way back to square 1, if needs be). I have had games where it took over 3000 moves to win. (Each undo counts as a move...)

    I doubt it's exactly 100%, though, as I'm sure we could set up the deck such that that arrangement is unwinnable.

  • 6 years ago

    Two suit is winnable almost every time. I had not found a game in over 1000 that I couldn't win by going back and redoing....until today. I want to know if this game is winable since I have tried all combos of moves I could think of!

  • 6 years ago

    Over the years I have played a lot of two and four suit spider solitaire of which the only one which really interests me is the four suit - I complete a batch of 10,000 games and then change - my third batch of 10,000 just completed shows 29% - better than my last batch which was 22%; I do however manage to maintain "runs" (say 50 games) where I achieve around 33%. The only "cheating" I sometimes do is change the game if I do not like the look of the opening deal.

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