Pyramid Solitaire
Pyramid Solitaire Rules
Objective
The objective in Pyramid Solitaire is to get rid of all the cards in the Pyramid. You get rid of cards by matching two cards whose ranks equal 13 together. Possible matches would be a 3 and a 10, 5 and an 8 etc. An ace ranks as 1, a jack is 11, a queen is 12 and a king is 13.
Gameplay
The Pyramid solitaire in the game board is made up of four things:
The Pyramid: The Pyramid is made up of 28 cards, in 7 rows. Each card is partially covered by two cards from the next row.
The Stock: The faceown pile on the bottom left. It is used to draw cards from and put on the Waste.
The Waste: The faceup pile next to the Stock. Cards on the Waste can be matched to cards in the Pyramid to get rid of the Pyramid cards. E.g. You can drag a 4 from the Waste onto an open 9 on the Pyramid, and then both of those cards will move to the Foundation, and out of the game.
The Foundation: The pile on the bottom right, where the cards that have been removed from the Pyramid are put.
The purpose of the game is to match cards together so their ranks are equal to 13. The cards that are available on the pyramid that have no other cards cover them, and the top card on the Waste pile. In the beginning of the game all the cards in the bottom row of the pyramid are available, then gradually the cards in the upper rows become available as you remove more of the cards in the lower rows.
Allowed Moves
Flip cards from the Stock On the Waste. You move cards from the Stock On the Waste by clicking on the Top Card of the Stock.
Move the top card of the Waste onto an open Pyramid card. You can either drag the top card of the Waste onto a Pyramid card to remove both of them, or you can first click the Waste card and then the Pyramid card. Both do the same thing, you just click or drag depending on what you like better. The Pyramid card must be available for this to work, it cannot be covered by any Pyramid card from a lower row.
Move a Pyramid card onto another Pyramid card. Both the Pyramid cards must be available, not covered by any other card for this to work. Exactly like with the stock card you can either drag one card onto the other, or first click on one and then click on the other.
Move a Pyramid card onto a Pyramid card that is covering it. If, for example, a 4 is covering a 9, and the other card covering the 9 is already removed, then you can move the 4 onto the 9. If there is another card also covering 9, then you can not do this. It varies between versions of Pyramid Solitaire Whether this move is allowed or not, I’ve decided to allow it.
Reset the Stock once it is empty. Once you’ve flipped all the cards from the stock onto the Waste you can click on the RESET button where the stock was, and it will put all the cards from the Waste back into the stock. In this version you are allowed to reset the stock as many times as you want.
Move a King to the Foundation. The purpose is to move cards whose combined ranks equals 13 to the foundation. A King ranks as 13 by itself, so it can’t be matched with any other card. To get rid of a king you can simply click the card once, or manually drag it onto the foundation.
You can Undo as many times as you like. The game offers unlimited undos. Each Undo counts as a new move though, so if you’re trying to win the game as few moves as possible you should be careful about how many undos you use.
Winning
A game is considered if all the cards are removed from the Pyramid. Not all games are winnable. The game will notify you if there is no chance of winning the game anymore.
Time and Moves
The game counts the moves you make, and measures it takes to finish the game, so you can compete against your previous best games. The best possible game would be if you never used the stock and always removed two cards at a time from the Pyramid (no kings), in which case your move would count to 14.
Variations ONLINE GAME
There are many variations of Pyramid Solitaire possible. In some you have more Waste piles, in others you will never reset the stock, some have the stock face-up, and there are plenty of others as well. I have chosen this variation, please do not email me telling it “wrong”, there are many possibilities, this is just the one I like the best 🙂
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About Pyramid Solitaire
Author image
Hi. My name is Einar Egilsson and I created this version of Pyramid Solitaire. This is the fourth solitaire game I’ve made, and it was fun to make, mostly because it looks a bit different than the other ones, and the animation at the start was fun as well.
If you have any questions, comments or requests for other solitaire games you can send them to admin@cardgames.io or tweet at me @cardgames_io.
As always, many thanks go to Nicu Buculei, who created the awesome playing card images that I use for the game.
If you like Pyramid Solitaire check out my other card games, and please share them on Facebook or Twitter.
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