Can anyone ever win spider solitaire on four suits

In a word, yes, you can win at four-suit Spider Solitaire. Unfortunately, the ability to improve with experience/skill is highly diminished, and luck plays a much greater part. The creators of the game may disagree, but that is my experience. [struck-out text is not accurate] The "priority metric" one must operate on is 1 - Develop empty columns; 2 - Develop columns King-to-Ace without regard to suit, but not "burying" cards still unturned; 3 - Organize columns in King-to-Ace order and in like suits; and finally, 4 - Send finished columns to "done" stack.
As with two-suit Spider Solitaire, continual "cleaning up" (organizing) and taking advantage of every play as early as possible (this might be the true secret to success in all Spider Solitaire) is extremely important.
Unfortunately, the difficulty level is so high, and so dependant upon luck, that playing is more discouraging than enjoyable. For every game I win, I have to play that game from 8 to 10 times to get it right - you can imagine how many times I play other games without winning.

As a final word, I'm not sure it's worth playing, although it makes two-suit SS look like childs'-play.

*** 2nd comment - I believe every game of four card spider solitaire is winnable. As of now I am on a 56 game win streak and before that had a 31 game win streak. I now think if I had kept re-playing the game I lost I eventually would have won it as well. About a quarter of the games I have had to re-play, the very tough ones I might re-play up to 5-6 times. When I first started playing I was winning a third of my games, then two-thirds, but now I effectively win them all. Average time is a half hour but the very tough games have taken up to 21/2 hours (which I usually play and re-play over several days).

Of course to do this you have to take the guessing out of the game by using the undo key (Ctrl Z). Effectively you play out every possible scenario every time you deal the cards, until you get the optimum result, which is usually but not always the most cards played. If you do not use the undo key then my estimate is the best you will ever do is win one out of ten. This way of playing eliminates all guess work, and is the most challenging and fun way to play four card solitaire.

As for tips, the ones above are very good. A few further ideas. In each deal develop as many empty columns as you can and then organize them from highest to lowest in each column as best as you can. Also move the cards in these columns so they are same suited as much as possible. A King should only be moved to an empty column when you can do so without reducing the number of free columns. Worry more about the number of free columns than buried cards. Once a column has no down facing cards try to keep it so it can become free again easily after the next deal. When the next deal comes it is best if it only take two moves for it to be empty again. On the really hard games you have to save your game, find out what cards will be turned up on the next deal, and then go back to the saved game and arrange your columns in the most optimum way for the upcoming deal. This is often the only way to arrange for an empty column.

I was stunned to find out I was always winning. At one point I was certain no more than 2/3s of the games could be won. I would love to learn whether anyone else has had the same experience.

As for the worth of playing this way, it is now the only way that interests me.

Several thoughts added by a player who consistently solves 99% of four-suited games:

Most, but not all four-suit Spider Solitaire games can be won. There are several deals that would can render the game un-solvable.

Solving a four-suit Spider Solitaire game requires patience and a developing longer-term strategies. I set the goal of eventually solving the game, not at going for points.

I generally follow base strategies for success and see how effective that is. With four suits, the game is rarely solved that way on the first attempt, so the game becomes a matter of undoing and using UNDO (ctrl Z) to go down alternative paths.

You improve chances of success each subsequent path by paying attention to which cards you needed, which cards fell where on subsequent draws.

Longer term strategies involve sometimes explicitly disregarding the base strategies for several purposes:

* to work your way down a specific column that contains cards that are needed later.
* to keep a card open that you will need one or more draws down the road.
* to move a card to a location that is more advantageous later.

Examples: On a re-do, I may not make an obvious move (say 3H to 4H) at all because the card I would be moving (or placing it on) is needed more later. (Perhaps, in this fictitious example, the 4H can be used a draw later to place a 3C, opening a column under the 3C revealing significant additional useful cards)

How do you determine what you need? As you work your way down, you'll encounter situations where you might determine that you really need 6's. When you look, you realize that you used up several 6's by placing 5's earlier, but the 5's delivered little or minimal benefit (or even just an alternate benefit that still resulted in a non-win). So use UNDO until you can choose the path of not placing the 5 on the 6.

As you do this, you may be surprised at the amazing amount of impact a single alternate choice can make. Just as surprising to me has been the amount of manipulation that can be do achieved.

Example: To overcome a problem of lots of 7's in the fourth draw, I set an intermediate goals of having an 8 open four draws into the game. Going down that path can change the evolution of that play significantly.

Games may take several hours to resolve, and like the user of a prior comment, I usually solve those over a period of one or more days, playing a few minutes at a time.

I find that I seem to be in the minority: anecdotally, it seems few people play four-suited Spider more than just a few times before they give up and tick to two suits.

To me, it is a challenge for which I seem to have endless patience (in stark contrast to the lack of patience I have for most other things), and I find it very therapeutic and rewarding to work through the challenges of such a game.

By the way, my stats of 99% wins (instead of 100%) in four suits comes about from the followings: 1) I accidentally click the End game when the message pops up when reaching the end of a path 2) I have to give up a game because I need to reboot the computer and 3) Occasionally I do get a game that I just cannot find the path and I grew tired of trying it.