Hints for Winning the Card Game Pyramid

One 52-card deck is all you need to play pyramid.playing cards image by Warren Millar from Fotolia.com

Pyramid is a simple solitaire card game played with one deck of cards laid out in a pyramid shape called the tableau. The remainder of the deck makes up the stock, called the talon. When playing pyramid, pairs of cards with visible faces and values that add up to 13 can be removed. Players can go through the talon three times, although it is not shuffled, with the goal of removing all cards from play.

Assess the Pyramid

Before starting to play, look at the cards in the pyramid, and identify any areas that might be difficult to remove from play. Because there are a limited number of cards, if all of the matching cards are buried, the game is impossible to win. For example, if there is a 7 in the bottom row of the tableau and all four of the 6's are in the tableau above the 7, it will be impossible to remove the 7 because there are no matching cards available in the deck. However, if there are only three 6's in the pyramid, you know to use the 6 in the deck to remove the 7 at the bottom.

Remove a king from the talon or the tableau whenever possible. The kings do not need to be paired with any other card because each has a value of 13, and they have no use in the deck. Especially when they are in the tableau, removing a king can open up a card above it to be matched.

Because all cards need to be matched to win the game, try to keep the talon and tableau of generally equal size. The tableau begins with 28 cards and the talon with 24, so the best balance is to make two matches within the tableau and the rest between talon and tableau. This will help avoid the problem of being done with the tableau but not able to match the cards in the talon because they are not next to each other.

Before matching a card from the talon with another card, it should be put on the discard pile. This allows the next card in the talon to be visible, adding potentially important information on how the previous card should be played. For example, if the top card in the talon is a 3 and there are two 10's available to match it to in the tableau, moving the 3 to the discard will reveal the next card in the talon. If that card matches with a card that would be fully visible by removing a 10, that is the wiser move to make.

Because the talon is gone through three times without shuffling, try to remember the order of the cards in the discard pile. Knowing this information can help make crucial decisions late in the game on which of two options to take. The rationale is similar to the previous point but goes further because cards in the talon that are coming soon can be taken into account.