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, Queen is 12 and King is 13.

Gameplay

The game board in Pyramid solitaire 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 facedown 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 those cards will be moved to the Foundation, and are out of the game.
• The Foundation: The pile on the bottom right, where cards that have been removed from the Pyramid are put.

The purpose of the game is to match cards together so their ranks equal 13. The cards that are available are any card on the Pyramid that have no other cards covering 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 slowly 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 onto the Waste. You move cards from the Stock onto 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 click 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 can't 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 it is covering. If, for example, a 4 is covering a 9, and the other card covering the 9 has already been removed, then you can move the 4 onto the 9. If there's another card also covering the 9 then you can't 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's 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 equal 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 in as few moves as possible you should be careful about how many undos you use.

Winning

A game is considered won if all the cards from the Pyramid are removed. Not all games are winnable. The game will notify you if there's no chance of winning the game anymore.

Time and Moves

The game counts the moves you make, and measures the time 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 that case your move count would be 14.

Variations

There are many variations of Pyramid Solitaire possible. In some you have more Waste piles, in others you never reset the Stock, some have the Stock face-up, and there are plenty of others as well. I've chosen this variation, please don't email me telling me it's "wrong", there are many possibilities, this is just the one I like the best :)

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