Grounds for a Divorce takes the Spider idea and bends the ranks into a loop. A King may be placed on an Ace, and a completed set of thirteen same-suit cards does not have to begin at the King — it can start at any rank and roll round through the seam. Every one of the fifty cards on the board is face up from the first move, so there is nothing to dig for and nothing to guess at. What is left is a pure sorting problem across ten columns, with fifty-four more cards waiting to fall on top of your plans. Free in your browser, no sign-up.
Goal: collect all eight suit runs of thirteen cards.
Two rules make this game unlike the rest of its family, and both reward the same habit: stop thinking about Kings.
Grounds for a Divorce is a well-established two-deck patience, listed under its German name Scheidungsgrund as well as its English one. The PySol Fan Club collection registers both names for the same game, and its implementation states the wrap twice over — once on the tableau, so a King may land on an Ace, and once on the foundation, so a completed set may begin at any rank instead of only at the King. Both halves are necessary. With only the first the wrap would let you build runs you could never collect; with only the second you could never assemble one.
It also descends from the relaxed branch of the family rather than from Spider proper, which is why the stock behaves differently: it deals whether or not columns are empty, and its own code is commented as dealing a card to each non-empty row. In Spider an empty column blocks the deal entirely, and managing that is a large part of the game. Here it does not, so a space becomes something you can simply keep.
The wrap is the reason the game deserves its own entry rather than being a setting. It removes the King as a fixed anchor, and with it the whole shape of how a run gets built. In Spider every set is assembled downward from a King you must first find; here you assemble from whatever you have and let the sequence roll round.
Its neighbours on the same board change a different rule each. Tarantula lets same-colour runs travel; Black Widow lets any run travel; Big Spider adds a third pack and three more columns. For a shorter one-deck game in the family, play Spiderette.
One honest note on difficulty. PySolFC rates it mostly skill, and no published win rate we can reach carries a method or a sample size, so this page quotes none. The open board and the wrap both help the player; the fifty-four-card stock and the eight sets do not. It is generally considered one of the more approachable two-deck games in this family.
Yes. The rank chain wraps around in this game, so the Ace is not a dead end — it hosts a King exactly as a 3 hosts a 2. That single rule changes how every run is built.
No, and that is the game's other distinguishing rule. Any thirteen consecutive same-suit cards form a set, so the 5 down to the Ace and on round through the King to the 6 is complete and will be collected.
Three ways. The ranks wrap, a set may start at any rank, and the whole tableau is dealt face up. The stock also deals even when columns are empty, where Spider refuses — so an empty column is something you can keep here.
The row skips them. Each card goes onto a column that still holds cards, so a gap stays a gap — you keep your workspace, but you receive fewer cards from that deal than you otherwise would.
None at the start. All fifty tableau cards are dealt face up, so every decision is one you can actually reason about. Only the order of the 54-card stock is unknown to you.
That is the original German name, of which Grounds for a Divorce is the direct translation. The PySol Fan Club collection records both for the same game, and the rules are identical under either name.