Pyramid

Pyramid is one of the most recognisable solitaire layouts and one of the least forgiving. Twenty-eight cards in a tidy triangle, a rule a child could follow — take pairs adding to thirteen — and a win rate that under strict rules sits somewhere around one game in fifty.

That gap between simplicity and difficulty is the whole appeal. There is nothing to learn beyond the arithmetic, so you are never fighting the rules; you are fighting the deal, and the deal usually wins. Games are short, which softens the blow: a round takes a few minutes, and the next pyramid is already waiting. It is a good game for playing in gaps, and a poor one for anybody who needs to finish what they start.

Twenty-eight cards form a pyramid of seven rows, each card half-covered by the two below it. Remove pairs that add up to thirteen — Ace with Queen, two with Jack, and so on, counting Jack as eleven, Queen as twelve and King as thirteen. Kings pair with nothing and come off on their own. Only a card with nothing on top of it can be taken, so the pyramid unpicks from the bottom row upward. The remaining cards go through the stock one at a time, and the current stock card can pair with an exposed pyramid card. Standard rules allow no redeal.

The decision that matters is which of two possible partners to use, and the answer is usually whichever one unblocks more of the pyramid. Look at what a removal exposes rather than at the removal itself. Because the stock passes once and does not come back, a card you skip is a card you have spent, so it is worth holding a pairing in the pyramid if the same rank will come round in the stock. Be aware of the real odds before judging your own play: Wikipedia puts them at around 1 in 50 under strict rules, so losing is the normal outcome and not a sign you played badly. The reputation Pyramid has for being a beginner's game is about how quickly you can learn it, not how often you can win it.