About Pyramid Solitaire
Everything reduces to thirteen
Twenty-eight cards in a pyramid, a stock of twenty-four behind it, and one arithmetic rule. Two exposed cards leave together when their ranks total thirteen; a King is worth thirteen by itself and goes alone. There are only six pairs in existence and they are worth knowing by sight rather than by addition:
- A + Q
- 2 + J
- 3 + 10
- 4 + 9
- 5 + 8
- 6 + 7
Fluent players stop calculating fairly quickly. A 5 appears and the eye simply starts hunting for eights.
We would rather tell you the real clear rate
About three per cent of pyramid deals can be cleared even by a player making flawless decisions. That number is unflattering and it stays on the site anyway, because a game you lose thirty times before winning once is only enjoyable if nobody has led you to expect otherwise. The difficulty setting is simply how many times you may recycle the stock: twice on Easy, once on Medium, never on Hard. Nothing else changes, and the deal is a straight shuffle in all three cases.
Where to read more
The pair chart is the page regulars actually use — every rank with its partner and counting tips for people who still add. The rules explain what counts as exposed, strategy deals with the awkward business of deciding which of two possible partners to spend, and variations covers Relaxed Pyramid, Giza and the versions that ease the ceiling.
The name on the domain
pyramidsolitaire.io is published by Card Games Studio, a small independent studio responsible for roughly two dozen free browser card and tile games. We own every site linked at the bottom of this page, and saying so seems better than letting a reader guess whether those recommendations were paid for; the studio page lists them all. Most of the mail this particular game attracts is people asking whether the deal was rigged after a bad run, and the answer is genuinely no. If you would rather report something concrete — a pair the board refused, a redeal that vanished — write to hello@coffeebreak.gg.