Pyramid Solitaire: the game of pairs that add up to 13

Pyramid Solitaire is one of the friendliest card games ever invented, and one of the most stubborn. The rules take about thirty seconds to learn: find two cards that add up to 13, send them away, and keep going until the pyramid is gone. No suits to worry about, no long columns to untangle, no counting trumps.

What makes it stick is the shape of the board. Twenty-eight cards sit in a tidy triangle, each one half-covering the two below it. Every pair you remove opens a door somewhere else, and every pair you take too early can slam one shut.

You can play it here free, with no ads and nothing to sign up for. The cards are big and easy on the eyes, and a game starts the moment the page loads.

How the table is set out

A standard 52-card deck is used, and it is split into two parts:

• The pyramid: 28 cards dealt face up in seven rows, one card on top, then two, then three, and so on down to seven cards along the bottom.
• The stock: the remaining 24 cards, kept face down beside the pyramid.
• The waste: the pile where stock cards land once you turn them over. Only the top card of the waste is in play.

Every card in the pyramid except the bottom row is partly covered by two cards from the row beneath it. A card is free (playable) only when both cards resting on it have gone.

The rules, explained simply

Card values

• Ace = 1
• Number cards = their face value (2 to 10)
• Jack = 11
• Queen = 12
• King = 13

Suits and colours do not matter at all. A red seven and a black seven are exactly the same card as far as Pyramid is concerned.

Making a pair

Remove any two free cards whose values total exactly 13. The full list of pairs is short enough to memorise over one cuppa:

• Ace + Queen
• 2 + Jack
• 3 + 10
• 4 + 9
• 5 + 8
• 6 + 7

A King is worth 13 on its own, so it is removed by itself the moment it is free. There are four Kings in the deck, and they are free removals every time.

Which cards you may use

You can pair:

• two free cards in the pyramid, or
• one free pyramid card with the top card of the waste, or
• the top card of the waste with the card you have just turned from the stock (in versions that allow it).

Turning the stock

When there is nothing to take, turn the next card from the stock onto the waste. Keep doing that, pairing whenever you can, until the stock runs out.

Winning and losing

You win when the whole pyramid is cleared, the single card at the apex is the last one to go. You are stuck when no two free cards add to 13 and the stock is empty. That happens often, and it is nothing to be ashamed of: Pyramid is famously unforgiving, as the numbers below show.

Playing Pyramid Solitaire here

This site exists for one reason: the pleasure of a good game of patience.

• Completely free. No ads of any kind, no pop-ups, no paywalls.
• Nothing required. No download, no install, no sign-up, no account, no email address.
• No gambling, no in-app purchases, no timer pushing you along. Take as long as you like over a move.
• Large, clear cards and readable text, which helps if your eyes are tired at the end of the day. There is a zoom control to make the board bigger still.
• Hint when you cannot spot a pair, unlimited Undo when you take one too early, Restart to try the same idea again, and Auto Play to finish off a game that is already solved.
• Drag and drop, or simply tap two cards to send them away, whichever suits your mouse, trackpad or touchscreen.
• Wins, time and moves are tracked for the current game, so you can see how you are going.
• Sound can be switched off, and there is a fullscreen mode plus table colour settings if green is not your shade.
• It runs in any modern browser on desktop, tablet and phone, handy on the bus, in the waiting room, or in the armchair.

Every feature is available to everyone. Nothing is locked, because nothing is for sale. If you are curious about what we do and do not collect, our privacy page spells it out.

Strategy that actually works

Pyramid rewards patience of the other kind, the kind where you look before you leap.

1. Look down, not across. Before you take a pair, ask which cards it uncovers. A pair that frees two new cards is worth more than a pair that frees none.
2. Dig out the bottom rows early. The deepest cards are your bottleneck. Rows six and seven hold the keys to everything above them.
3. Beware the duplicate trap. If two cards of the same rank sit in the pyramid and only one partner is available, work out which one must go first. Undo is there when you guess wrong.
4. Don't take every pair on offer. Removing a card from the waste pile that you will need later for a buried pyramid card is the most common way to lose a winnable deal.
5. Count your Kings. Four Kings clear themselves, so any King in the pyramid is a free removal, but only once it is uncovered.
6. Plan a whole run before you click. Good players often see four or five moves as a chain, not one at a time.
7. Restart without guilt. Many deals genuinely cannot be won. Knowing when to walk away is a skill.

Common mistakes

• Clearing the easy pairs on the bottom row straight away without checking what sits above them.
• Burning through the stock quickly to "see what's there", then finding the card you needed has gone past.
• Forgetting that a pyramid card needs both of its coverers removed, not just one.

What the odds really are

Pyramid has a reputation as the hardest of the popular patience games, and the figures back that up, with one honest caveat.

The rigorous work on patience odds comes from Charlie Blake and Ian P. Gent's "Solvitaire" study at the University of St Andrews, which puts Klondike's winnability at 81.945% ± 0.084% in the "thoughtful" version where the player can see every card. FreeCell, by the same body of research, is solvable in very nearly every deal.

Pyramid has no equivalent peer-reviewed figure. What exists are estimates from long-running solitaire publishers and player communities, and they vary because the rules vary. MobilityWare gives a range of roughly 0.5% to 5.5% for Pyramid, the lowest of the mainstream games. Solitaire 365 reports about 1-2% under strict rules (clearing all 52 cards) and around 30% under relaxed rules where only the 28 pyramid cards must go.

Treat those as ballpark numbers rather than settled science. The practical lesson is the same either way: a lost game of Pyramid usually means a bad deal, not a bad player. If you want kinder odds tonight, FreeCell is the gentlest of the lot, and Klondike Draw 3 sits comfortably in between.

Pyramid Solitaire and New Zealanders

There is no official count of how many Kiwis play Pyramid specifically, nobody surveys that. But we do know quite a lot about how New Zealanders play games generally, and it explains why browser patience is so popular here.

• Research by the Interactive Games & Entertainment Association with Bond University found that 79 per cent of New Zealanders play video games (reported by Te Ao Māori News in 2023), up six percentage points on the previous year.
• The same programme of research has consistently found older players in the mix: the Digital New Zealand 2020 study reported that 42 per cent of those aged 65 and over identify as gamers, with retirement-age players averaging about 79 minutes a day (Scoop, NZ Herald).
• Reporting on the same IGEA research notes that puzzle, board and card games are among the popular genres here, chosen for mental challenge and plain enjoyment, which is exactly where Pyramid lives.
• InternetNZ's Internet Insights 2023 found 63 per cent of New Zealanders spend two to four hours a day online outside work, plenty of room for a five-minute pyramid.

A little history

Pyramid belongs to the family of "adding" patiences that appeared in Victorian-era card game collections, alongside relatives such as Tri Peaks and Golf. It reached a much wider audience when solitaire collections arrived on home computers, and it has been a staple of browser card sites since the early days of the web. Its enduring appeal is the arithmetic: 13 is a number children can work with and adults never tire of. It is also a tidy game for a short sitting, a winter evening in front of the fire, or the ten minutes before dinner.

Frequently asked questions

Do suits matter in Pyramid Solitaire?

No. Only the value of the card counts. Any two cards totalling 13 can be paired, regardless of suit or colour.

Why can't I move a card I can clearly see?

Because it is still covered. A pyramid card is only playable once both cards overlapping it below have been removed.

Are Kings really removed on their own?

Yes. A King is worth 13, so it satisfies the target by itself. Aces are worth 1 and pair with Queens.

Is every Pyramid deal winnable?

No, far from it. Published estimates put winnable deals in the low single digits under strict rules, so restarting is a perfectly sensible move.

Is there any cost, or any catch?

None. The game is free, there are no ads or pop-ups, no account, no email and no in-app purchases. Hint, Undo, Restart and Auto Play are available to everyone.

Can I play on my phone?

Yes. It runs in any modern browser on desktop, tablet and phone. Tap two cards to pair them, or drag one onto the other.

Does Undo count against me?

Not here. Undo is unlimited and there is no timer hurrying you. Use it to explore a line and step back.

What should I play next?

If Pyramid has been unkind, try FreeCell for a game where skill decides almost everything, or Spider Solitaire (2 Suits) for a longer sit-down. The full list is on our games page, there are more tips on the blog, and classic Klondike is always waiting on the home page.