How to Play Pyramid Solitaire

There are seemingly endless versions of the popular game Solitaire. Pyramid Solitaire eliminates cards from the pyramid by combining 2 cards whose face value add up to 13. In this game, Aces are worth one point, Jacks are worth 11 points, Queens are worth 12 points and Kings are worth 13 points. Kings are the only cards that can be removed by themselves.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Deck of playing cards with the Jokers removed from the stack
• Computer with Pyramid Solitaire installed or the ability to play a Java-based game online

Set up the Cards for Pyramid Solitaire

1. Shuffle the deck several times to get the cards mixed up.

2. Place the top card of the deck down face up.

3. Place 2 cards face up, partially covering the bottom left hand and bottom right hand corners of the first card.

4. Use 3 cards to form the next layer by laying them evenly across the bottom of the second row of cards.

5. Lay 4 cards along the bottom of the row consisting of 3 cards.

6. Put 5 cards along the bottom of the row consisting of 4 cards.

7. Place 6 cards along the bottom of the row containing 5 cards.

8. Lay the final row of 7 cards along the bottom of the pyramid.

9. Set aside the remaining cards to be used as the covered letter packs (stack of cards to used to flip a card over for play when you cannot use cards in the pyramid to total 13).

Play Pyramid Solitaire

10. Look for 2 cards along the bottom row that add up to 13. For example, a Queen (worth 12) plus an Ace (worth 1) gives you 13 points. Remove the 2 cards.

11. Flip the top card over on the letter stack to reveal an additional card to use with a fully uncovered card on the pyramid. Repeat until a play can be made.

12. Remember that a card on the pyramid can only be played when another card is not on top of the bottom of the card. Every row (except 7) has 2 cards touching the card underneath it.

13. Beat the game when all of the cards from the pyramid and the letter stack have been played.

Tips & Warnings

• Try to play through the cards in the stack and the cards in the pyramid at the same speed if possible.
• Plan ahead when removing cards from the pyramid so that usable cards are revealed.

[rkwaters]

on 6/15/2008 Many Pyramid games can be seen to be unwinnable simply by looking at the pyramid. For example, if there are 3 queens at the top of the pyramid and 2 aces at the bottom covering the queen columns, the game is unwinnable. Every Pyramid game is winnable at solitaireinnovations.com because all the unwinnable games are thrown out.