How to play TriPeaks solitaire

Rules in short: deal 28 cards in three overlapping peaks, with only the bottom row face up, and turn one card to start the waste pile. Move any uncovered card that is one higher or one lower than the top waste card onto the waste, in any suit. Cards turn face up as the cards covering them are cleared. When you can't play, turn the next stock card. Clear all three peaks to win.

Setup Playing a card Kings and aces The stock Streaks Example How often can you win? Strategy Variations FAQ

Setup

Deal 28 cards in four rows that form three peaks: 3 cards at the tips, then 6, then 9, and 10 along the bottom. Each card overlaps two cards in the row below. The bottom ten are face up; the other 18 start face down. Turn the next card face up to start the waste pile, and put the last 23 cards face down as the stock.

Playing a card

A card is free when no card overlaps it. Move a free card to the waste if it is exactly one rank above or below the top waste card. Suits and colors don't matter: on a 7 you can play any 6 or any 8. The card you play becomes the new top of the waste, so you can keep going: 7, 8, 9, 8, 7, 6. When both cards that overlap a face-down card are gone, it turns face up and can be played.

Kings and aces

In most versions the ranks wrap around: a king can go on an ace and an ace on a king, so Q-K-A-2 is a legal run. Some players treat aces as low only, which makes the game noticeably harder. On Snug Table you choose under New game; wrap is on by default.

The stock

When you can't play, or don't want to, turn the top stock card onto the waste. It becomes the new card to play on. The stock goes through only once; there is no redeal. If the stock is empty and no free card fits, the game is over.

Streaks

A streak is a run of cards played from the peaks without turning a stock card. Long streaks are the heart of TriPeaks, and many computer versions score them: each card in a streak is worth more than the one before. Snug Table shows your current streak and your longest one, and keeps your best ever streak in your stats instead of a point score.

An example

How often can you win TriPeaks?

Far more often than Pyramid, if you could see every card. We dealt 1,053 shuffles with the usual king-ace wrap and ran our solver, which knows where every face-down card is: 95% could be cleared, only 0.2% were proven impossible, and the rest hit the solver's search limit. Without the wrap, 67.7% of 739 shuffles could be cleared and 3.5% were proven impossible.

A real player can't see the face-down cards, so the real win rate is much lower. A simple strategy that only looks at the face-up cards and always plays the longest run it can see cleared 34% of 1,500 deals with the wrap and 11% without it, with a longest streak of about 7 cards per game. Good play sits between those numbers. On Snug Table, Winnable deal gives you only shuffles our solver has cleared, and the daily deal is always winnable.

TriPeaks strategy

• Plan the run before you start it. Look at every free card and count how long a chain you can make. Two short runs are worse than one long one.
• Turn up face-down cards. When two plays are equal, choose the card that uncovers a face-down card. More visible cards mean more choices.
• Work the peaks evenly. Each peak has a face-down top card; clearing the lower rows across all three peaks keeps your options open.
• Don't rush the stock. Turn a stock card only when no play helps. Every stock card skipped is gone for good.
• Sometimes stop a run. If the next card in your run would leave nothing playable while another card waits behind it, consider turning the stock instead. The hint and the coach review show when this matters.
• Use the wrap. With kings and aces connected, a king is never a dead end: watch for K-A-2 and Q-K-A runs.

Variations

• No wrap: aces are low only. Harder.
• Scoring: streak points, peak bonuses and a bonus for unused stock cards are common in apps. Snug Table tracks streaks and time instead.
• Open deal: some players deal every card face up, which turns TriPeaks into a puzzle. Our solver plays this way.
• Related games: Golf solitaire uses the same one-up, one-down idea with seven columns; Pyramid pairs cards to 13.