Pyramid Solitaire dismantles a 28-card pyramid by removing pairs that add up to thirteen, while kings leave on their own. Play Pyramid Solitaire free in your browser — no download, no account.
How You WinClear all twenty-eight pyramid cards. A king goes on its own; every other card leaves paired with one whose rank brings the total to thirteen.
- Layout
- 28-card pyramid · 24 in stock · one waste pile
- Passes
- One, two or three cycles through the stock
- Deals
- Verified solvable under the pass count you chose
Pyramid Solitaire Setup: The Pyramid, Stock, Waste and Discard
- Pyramid: twenty-eight cards in seven rows — one at the tip, then two, three, and so on to seven along the base. Each card is overlapped by the two below it and cannot move until both are gone.
- Stock: the remaining twenty-four cards, face down. Turning one moves it to the waste.
- Waste: turned stock cards land here face up, and only the top one can be paired.
- Discard: where matched pairs and lone kings go. Cards that leave never come back, and only the pyramid has to be cleared to win — leftover stock and waste cards do not matter.
Complete Rules
- Twenty-eight cards form seven rows, each card overlapping two in the row below. The remaining twenty-four cards become the stock.
- A pyramid card is available only when both cards covering it have been removed. The bottom row is available from the start.
- Two available cards leave together when their ranks total thirteen. Ace is one, jack eleven, queen twelve.
- A king is thirteen on its own and is removed as a single card whenever it is available.
- Turning the stock moves one card to the waste. Only the top of the waste can be paired, and it pairs with an available pyramid card — never with the card underneath it in the waste.
- When the stock runs out, the waste turns over to become the stock again, in the same order. Each of those turnovers is one pass, and the setting limits how many you get.
- The deal is won when the pyramid is empty; leftover stock and waste cards do not matter.
- The deal is lost when no pair is available and no passes remain.
Pyramid Solitaire Variants: One, Two or Three Passes
- The pass count is how many times the stock may be recycled, and it changes the game more than any other setting in this collection.
- 3 passes is the ordinary game and the most common default. Our solver finds about 65% of deals winnable at this setting.
- 2 passes is a real step up at roughly 49%, and 1 pass is a puzzle you will mostly lose at roughly 4% — the stock becomes a single non-renewable sequence.
- Because a deal number means a different problem at each pass count, every setting here has its own verified deal library rather than sharing one. Beyond three passes the curve is flat: unlimited passes only reaches about 67%.
Your First Game
- Take the whole bottom row apart first when you can. Every removal there frees a card in the row above, and the pyramid narrows quickly once row seven starts moving.
- Remove kings as soon as they are available. They cost nothing, and a king sitting in the pyramid blocks two cards below it for no reason.
- Look at what a pair uncovers, not just that it is legal. Two removals that open the same card are worth more than two that open nothing.
- Do not burn the stock. Every card you turn is a card you may not be able to reach again, especially at one or two passes.
- Undo is unlimited. Pyramid punishes ordering mistakes more than any other game here, and stepping back is usually cheaper than starting over.
Practical Strategy
- Plan around the deepest blockers. If both cards that could pair with a row-two card are in the pyramid itself, they must be freed in the right order or the deal is already lost.
- Track the ranks left in the stock. With four of each rank, needing a third eight when three are already gone is a plan with no future.
- Match pyramid cards with each other whenever possible and save the stock for cards you cannot otherwise reach. Stock cards are one-use at one pass.
- The waste top pairs only with the pyramid, never with the card beneath it. So turning the stock is worth doing only when the card it exposes has a partner already available.
- At one pass, play the pyramid first and the stock last. There is no recycling, so every stock card spent early is simply gone.
Winning and Special Rules
- The pass count is part of the deal's identity, not a difficulty slider laid over one game. Each of one, two and three passes has its own verified library, because a deal number means a different problem under each.
- We allow pairing only from the top of the waste, not from the top of the stock. That follows cardgames.io and solitaired; the Microsoft lineage allows the stock top too.
- We do not implement overlap discard — the rule that lets two pyramid cards go when one is covered only by the other. Adding it roughly doubles the one-pass win rate.
- Our solver reproduced all four published figures from an independent hundred-million-deal study, once those two rules were made switchable, with a maximum deviation of 0.09 percentage points. That is the external check behind the numbers quoted here.
- The one-pass library is four times the size of the others, because only about 4% of deals are winnable and a small library would run out.
Common Mistakes
- Turning stock cards while pyramid pairs are still available. The pyramid is the goal; the stock is a limited resource spent to reach it.
- Taking a legal pair that opens nothing while a different legal pair would free a blocked card.
- Forgetting that a king can go at any time. Kings never need a partner and never should be left in place.
- Assuming a three-pass strategy works at one pass. At one pass the stock is a single non-renewable sequence, and playing it the same way loses almost every deal.
- Comparing win rates across sites without checking the rules. The same deal can be winnable on one implementation and not another because of the stock-top and overlap rules.
How Difficult Is Pyramid Solitaire?
The pass count decides it, and the spread is the largest of any setting on this site. Our own exact solver finds about 4% of one-pass deals winnable, about 49% at two passes, and about 65% at three. Beyond three the curve is flat: allowing unlimited passes only reaches about 67%.
Those are exact figures, not estimates. Pyramid's state space is small enough to search completely — twenty-eight bits of pyramid, twenty-four of surviving stock, plus the waste top and the pass counter — so a deal is either proven winnable or proven not.
The rules matter more than the numbers suggest. An independent study of a hundred million deals reports 22.77% for one pass under a more permissive rule set and 9.02% under a stricter one; we reproduced both to within 0.09 points once we made those rules switchable. Our default is stricter still, which is why our one-pass figure is around 4%.
Practically: three passes is a normal game you will win around half to two-thirds of the time. Two passes is a real challenge. One pass is a puzzle you will mostly lose, which is why every deal we hand you at that setting comes from a library four times larger than the others.
Pyramid Solitaire FAQ
Which cards add up to thirteen?
Ace with queen, two with jack, three with ten, four with nine, five with eight, and six with seven. Ace counts one, jack eleven and queen twelve. A king is worth thirteen by itself and leaves alone.
Why can I not select that card?
A pyramid card can only be taken when nothing is resting on it. Each card is covered by the two cards diagonally below it, so both must go before it becomes available.
How many passes through the stock do I get?
One, two or three — you choose. The difference is enormous: our solver finds only about 4% of one-pass deals winnable, against roughly 49% at two passes and 65% at three.
Why do other sites give different win rates for Pyramid?
Because implementations disagree about two rules: whether the top of the stock can be paired directly, and whether two pyramid cards may be taken when one is covered only by the other. We allow neither, matching cardgames.io and solitaired. Those choices move the published numbers by a factor of two or more.
What is the history of Pyramid Solitaire?
Pyramid belongs to the family of adding-and-pairing patiences that spread through nineteenth-century European collections, where players cleared a layout by removing cards that summed to a fixed number. The pyramid shape and the target of thirteen are what made this one stick, and computer versions from the 1990s onward carried it to a mass audience.
Are Pyramid deals here verified solvable?
Yes, and specifically under the pass count you selected. A deal verified for three passes tells you nothing about one pass, so each setting has its own library.