Moved from IMHO to the Game Room, which didn’t exist when this thread was born.
I first learned to play Spider with 2 actual decks of cards shuffled together. Playing on the computer saves a ton of time shuffling between games. I can’t count how many games I’ve played; I think it would be thousands. In all the 25+ years I’ve been playing, I’ve never won more than three games in a row.
Understood. It never sounded like you were.
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I’ve never figured out a decent strategy even on one suit. Whether I win or not seems to be luck. Learning any strategic game through experience has never been my strong suit
This is why I love basic solitaire. I still have no strategy, but I do win more often than not.
I forgot to mention something important. The Windows 7 version of Spider Solitaire will pop up a window that says ‘There are no more possible moves’. Sometimes it lies. It doesn’t seem to recognize that by consolidating suits card can be moved to create an empty column or turn over a new card. Just X out the box and keep playing.
Also a variation of Spider with one suit, at the beginning click on all the undealt cards and try to solve. I haven’t kept track of the percentage but it might be around 5% can be solved that way.
I never play Spider on my desktop computer, only on my phone. It’s my go-to time burner when waiting in line, arriving early for appointments, taking a dump, etc.
It’s odd, but I only play 4-suit and probably only win one game in dozens. But there’s something about the gameplay that occupies my idle brain just perfectly. It doesn’t bother me in the slightest to win so rarely.
TriPolar’s strategy points sound similar to mine. I especially appreciated knowing I’m not the only one to prefer alternating colors just to reduce visual errors.
I mainly play one suit Spider. This year so far I have played 1,540 times w/ 1,462 wins for a 94.9% win rate. My high this year is 1205; although I’ve gotten 1206 in previous years.
I started playing 4 suits when 2 got too easy, but I never tried to win each game. some just got too difficult and it wasn’t fun. Several months ago, a friend told me his winning percentage was 86%. I couldn’t believe that that was really possible. But I decided to go for wins, not just fun, (being slightly competitive) I use the backup key quite a bit, and my personal best is 72 consecutive wins. I have a 96% win rate on 220 games played. I have had several games that have required over 2500 moves to win. And yes, I mean the four suit version.
I forgot to report in at win #1,000, but I did achieve my goal 
I just finished 1,294 wins in a row! More to come.
Nooo, two suits! My record when I attempted four suits was dismal lol
I searched on Google and had found someone had 57 straight wins on Spider Solitaire 4 suit game.
At that time I was on about 40. Today I reached 58
I now see 11sDad has reached 72 - wow
Obviously this is with undo
Stats Spider-4
Fastest win 15:29
Total games won 157/183 85.7%
Current win streak 58 Longest 58
Av Win time 51.29
I think the longest game was around 260mins
iPhone4 using cardshark
Was soooo proud until I saw 11sdad score Well done…
And another with 88 found here another spider game win streak of 4 - YouTube
I changed my goal to 2,000 games, and just got there 
I’m going to paste a pic below if this forum will let me.
It wouldn’t let me, so I stuck the screen shot on my website, if anyone’s interested -
http://www.donniemckinney.com/SpiderSolitaire.htm
Hmmm, can’t post a link, either. Oh, well. You can copy & paste 
I’ll have to check at home to see what my record is, but I’ll admit that often when playing 2 suit (I don’t bother with one or 4 suit typically), I’ll deal again if I don’t like the way the cards look - I’ve noticed this doesn’t count as a loss - at least on the XP version.
Are all of you playing the hands as dealt?
BTW, MobilityWare’s Spider for the IPhone has 3 suit capability - makes it tougher/more enjoyable.
I only play four suit, and I play it too much:
Games played (on this computer only) 3102
Won: 131
Longest winning streak: 2
I have Win 7 x64.
A few months ago something very odd happened. Prior to this my best effort was 87 moves. I only play for best effort. Now, the deal seems to be fixed in so far as I believe the hidden cards are not fixed as in a real card game. MS seems to deal simply to screw you not only by putting the usual King on the bottom of your long row but by trying to screw you up on every row. Now, if I can break 100 moves I feel it is a major victory. Dealing to screw you has completely pissed me off this game. Does anyone know a Spider with a fair deal?
I’m up to 19 out of 931, for a still resounding 1%. (Soon to be 19 out of 932…)
Damn.
I’m the OP, and I don’t even remember Spider Solitaire. I have no mental image of what the game looks like anymore.
Ten years on the Web is a long, long time.
I’m on 96%. Four suits. Current winning streak is 72 plays. Sometimes it takes a couple of thousand moves (that includes undos, obviously).
I got burned out on Plants -vs- Zombies and went back to MS spider solitaire. I believe it is impossible to lose in one suit. This assume you make an effort and also use the undo key. It seems that two suit is also winnable and I quit at 100 straight wins. The 4 suit is a real challenge and currently I am winning about %40 of all games. Some of my 4 suit wins run over 1000 moves but many are solved in 400 - 500 moves. I wrote a program using MS C# that reads the MS saved game file, converts to XML, and and produces solution(s) to remove columns. It runs about 6000 lines of C# code and works only on the 4 suit variation. Some observations:
If you fail to start a new game and change the option from 4 suit to 2 suit then your 4 suit loss is counted as a 2 suit loss which spoils your statistics.
If you make too many moves, undo too often, and repeatedly save, you will eventually corrupt the game file. A corrupted game file does not count as a loss but neither as a win.
Unless you use the debug tools, you must make a move before you can save a game. Sometimes the most obvious first move is the wrong one, and if you have saved the game after a “first move” it is not possible to undo to the original deal.
Those MS game debug tools do NOT allow a forced move on any of recent (win7, vista) spider solitaire games. They do allow you to save a game without making a move but you cant cheat anymore.
I have not figured out a way to update the MS save file from my program so I have to manually enter the moves into the game from my programs display panel.
I wanted to long and was unable to paste a link to my program.
http://stateson.net/images/msvs_spider.jpg