Play Grounds for a Divorce — Spider on a Circle

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.

How Do You Play Grounds for a Divorce?

Goal: collect all eight suit runs of thirteen cards.

Setup

• Decks: two standard decks, 104 cards.
• Tableau: ten columns of five cards, every one face up (50 cards).
• Stock: the remaining 54 cards, dealt a row at a time. No redeal.
• Scoreboard: eight slots, one for each completed set.

Rules

• Place a card on any card one rank higher, whatever its suit — and the ranks wrap, so a King may be placed on an Ace.
• A same-suit descending sequence travels as a unit, and it may cross the Ace-to-King seam.
• An empty column takes any card or any movable run.
• A run of thirteen consecutive cards in one suit is collected — and because the chain is a cycle, it may start at any rank. The 5 down to the Ace and on round through the King to the 6 is a complete set.
• The stock deals one card onto every column that still holds cards. It will deal while columns are empty, and the row simply skips the gaps.
• You win when all eight sets have been collected.

Grounds for a Divorce Strategy

Two rules make this game unlike the rest of its family, and both reward the same habit: stop thinking about Kings.

• Build from whatever you have most of. Because a set can start anywhere, the right run to assemble is the one your cards already suggest. If you have a long tail of spades running from the 9 downward, that is the set — carry on past the Ace into the King and keep going. Waiting for a King to anchor a run is the habit this game punishes.
• The Ace-King seam is a resource, not an obstacle. In every other Spider game an Ace is a dead end. Here it hosts a King, which means an exposed Ace is a landing spot for the single most awkward card in the pack. Look for them.
• Empty columns are safe to keep here. Unlike Spider, the stock deals over a gap rather than refusing to deal, so you may hold a column open through as many deals as you like. That is a real advantage — a permanent workspace — and it is the biggest single difference in how the game plays.
• But an empty column also loses you a card per deal. Each row skips the gaps, so cards you would have received go to other columns instead. Holding two columns open makes each deal noticeably lighter, which can be good or bad depending on whether you want the cards.
• Everything is visible, so plan properly. There are no hidden cards to excuse a bad decision. Before the first move, look for the two or three suits with the longest existing sequences and decide which you are actually going to finish.

Grounds for a Divorce, or Scheidungsgrund

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.