Pyramid Solitaire

TSBy The Strategy Desk·Published March 27, 2026

Pyramid Solitaire is a classic card game where the goal is to remove all 28 cards from a seven-row pyramid by pairing cards that add up to 13. Kings are removed on their own (value 13), while other cards must be matched: Queen + Ace, Jack + 2, 10 + 3, 9 + 4, 8 + 5, and 7 + 6.

How It Works

A standard 52-card deck is dealt into a pyramid of 7 rows. Row 1 has 1 card, row 2 has 2 cards, and so on down to 7 cards in the bottom row. Each card partially overlaps two cards in the row below. The remaining 24 cards form the stock pile.

A card is "exposed" when both cards overlapping it from the row below have been removed (or it's on the bottom row). Only exposed pyramid cards and the top waste card can be paired. Click the stock to draw cards to the waste pile. You get 2 stock recycles per game.

Card Values

• Ace = 1
• 2–10 = face value
• Jack = 11
• Queen = 12
• King = 13 (removed alone)

Tips for Winning

• Remove Kings immediately — they're free plays
• Prioritize uncovering cards near the top of the pyramid
• Try to keep both sides of the pyramid balanced
• Save your stock recycles for when you truly need them
• Use the hint button when you're stuck

History & Origins

Pyramid is one of the older documented patience games, appearing in nineteenth-century collections alongside Klondike and Accordion. Early patience compilers grouped it with the “addition” family because its core mechanic — discarding cards whose values sum to a fixed target — predates the tableau-builder games that now dominate solitaire. The sum-to-thirteen rule is the defining fingerprint, and almost every later variant inherits it unchanged. Because the rules are so simple, the game travelled easily: we find nearly identical layouts in Victorian-era English parlor books, German patience manuals, and French recueils under different names. The digital era did not reshape Pyramid the way it reshaped Klondike or FreeCell — it simply exposed how punishing the math can be once a dealer stops reshuffling sympathetically on our behalf.

Strategic Principles

Winning Pyramid consistently is less about reflexes and more about pacing, triage, and willingness to walk away from a doomed deal. We lean on a handful of principles every game:

• Prioritize pyramid cards over waste pairs. Every removal from the pyramid itself unblocks a card above; every removal that only involves the waste or stock leaves the structure intact. When a choice exists, we pair inside the pyramid first.
• Pair the expensive ranks early. Jacks, Queens, and Aces have only a single matching rank (2, A, and Q respectively). If we let a Queen sit in the waste until the last Ace is buried, the game is effectively over. Kings are free removals with no partner required, so we clear them the instant they become exposed.
• Count remaining value cards. A quiet mental tally of how many 8s, 5s, and Aces are still live tells us when a column is starving the pyramid of matches. If two Aces are already buried under the same Queen, we know we need the other two.
• Respect the pyramid layer order. Row 7 blocks row 6 blocks row 5. Clearing a bottom-row card only helps if it unlocks one of the two parents above. We choose between adjacent options by looking one layer up.
• Bank the stock recycles. Two recycles is not many. We hold the first recycle until we have spent the entire stock and cleared at least one exposed row so the second pass sees a genuinely different pyramid state.
• Know when to restart. Some deals are unwinnable from the first shuffle — for example, when four cards of the same rank sit stacked in one column of the pyramid. Recognising a lost deal quickly is a skill, not a surrender.

Difficulty & Win Rate

Pyramid is one of the harder mainstream solitaire games. Reported win rates cluster between about 0.5% and 3% for standard Pyramid with two recycles, which makes it roughly a hundred times harder than FreeCell and an order of magnitude harder than Klondike three-card draw. Academic and hobbyist solvers — including analyses published on solitairelaboratory.com and well-known patience handbooks such as David Parlett's Penguin Book of Patience — report similar ranges, with results drifting slightly upward when “perfect” play is allowed and drifting back toward 0.5–1% for human play without undo. The game's difficulty comes from two compounding factors: the pyramid creates hard stacking dependencies (each card blocks two parents), and the sum-to-thirteen rule leaves no flexibility — there is one and only one partner for each non-King rank. Relaxed Pyramid, which lets us undo freely, raises win rates dramatically because we can recover from exploratory pair choices that would otherwise brick the deal.

Common Mistakes

• Delaying King removals. Kings cost nothing to clear, yet new players often leave them in place while chasing a “prettier” pair. Every turn a King sits in the pyramid is a turn we wasted.
• Burning a 6 + 7 just because we can. Six and seven are the most abundant match in the deck. Using one pair from the waste when a better pyramid-clearing pair exists wastes a turn and can strand a future 6 with no partner.
• Ignoring the pyramid layer order. Removing both cards from a bottom-row pair that only unlocks a single row-6 card is weaker than removing a pair that unlocks two parents. We always read the layer above before committing.
• Spending recycles chasing one card. Recycling the stock to find a single Queen is almost always a mistake when other exposed pairs remain untouched. Recycle only after we have exhausted the board.
• Pairing across the stock too eagerly. If the top of the waste is a 9 and the pyramid contains both a 4 and an exposed 4 + 9 pair, pairing the waste 9 with a pyramid 4 may strand the remaining pyramid 4 later. We pair pyramid-internal first.
• Forgetting to count Aces. There are only four Aces and four Queens. If three of either rank are buried under a single parent, the fourth becomes a single point of failure for the whole deal.
• Misreading exposure. A card is only exposed when both children below it are gone. On mobile layouts this can look ambiguous; clicking the wrong card wastes a click but more importantly interrupts our planning.

How This Game Compares

Pyramid sits in the “discard” family of solitaires alongside Golf, TriPeaks, and Monte Carlo. These games share the goal of clearing a fixed layout directly — there are no foundations to build up and no tableau columns to extend. Where they diverge is the removal rule. Pyramid uses addition (pairs summing to 13). Golf and TriPeaks use sequencing (any ±1 rank). That single difference pushes Pyramid toward combinatorial tightness — each non-King has exactly one matching partner rank — while Golf and TriPeaks stay loose because most cards have two neighbours. Compared to the cascade family (Klondike, FreeCell, Spider, Yukon), Pyramid is fundamentally a different game: no columns of alternating colours, no foundations from Ace to King, no long relocation chains. It rewards discipline with high-value cards, not spatial planning across stacks. Players who enjoy the endgame compression of Pyramid often enjoy Monte Carlo and Accordion, both of which also reward careful partner selection under heavy pairing constraints.

Variant Notes

Pyramid has spawned a small ecosystem of rule tweaks that soften or sharpen the core challenge:

• Relaxed Pyramid. Unlimited undo and no recycle cap. Win rates climb toward the 10–15% range because bad pair choices can be rewound. This is the variant most app versions default to.
• Giza Pyramid. Three extra reserve cells let us park awkward cards during the endgame. Effectively converts three stock draws into free storage.
• Tut's Tomb (Double Pyramid). Two decks, two pyramids, all sums to 13. Longer game, lower variance. A good choice once we have the base rules automated.
• Apophis and similar reserve-row variants. Deals a short reserve row alongside the stock to give us an extra matching surface each turn.

Frequently Asked Questions

Learn More

• How to Play Pyramid Solitaire — Complete rules and setup guide
• Pyramid Strategy Guide — Advanced tips to win more games
• Play Klondike Solitaire — The classic solitaire game
• Play Spider Solitaire — Another popular solitaire variant
• Types of Solitaire — Explore 20+ solitaire variants