TriPeaks Solitaire

Climbing the peaks

How to play TriPeaks Solitaire

Twenty-eight cards are dealt into three overlapping pyramids — a row of three peak tops, then six, then nine, then a base of ten shared across all three. The ten base cards are face up; the eighteen above them are face down until the cards covering them have gone. One card is turned to start the waste and twenty-three remain in the stock.

A card can be played when nothing covers it and it is exactly one rank above or below the waste card. That card then becomes the new waste, so each move sets up the next. Suits are irrelevant throughout.

Clear all twenty-eight and you win; whatever is left in the stock does not matter. You may draw whenever you like, but every card you clear without drawing is a stock card saved for later.

The chain never breaks

The chain is a loop, not a line

In TriPeaks the ranks form a circle. An ace connects to a 2 in one direction and to a king in the other, so every rank on the board has exactly two neighbours and nothing is ever a dead end.

That sounds like a small detail, and it changes the game. In Golf, which uses the same one-rank rule without wrapping, the chain stops at both ends: a king connects only to a queen and an ace only to a 2, so kings and aces are cards you have to plan around. Here they are ordinary cards.

Keeping a run alive

What continues a TriPeaks run

Even a player who could see every card needs to draw while a card still fits in only 6% of deals, so without that knowledge, draw when nothing fits.

Chaining moves

TriPeaks Solitaire strategy

We tested the usual advice by playing 100,000 deals several ways, each seeing only the face-up cards, as you do. The winner: of the cards that fit, play the one that starts a run turning over the most face-down cards, and only then worry about length. That won 50% of deals. Simply turning over the most cards with each move won 47%.

Playing the first card that fits won only 29%. The Hint button plays the winning strategy above.

Length still counts when the choices are otherwise equal: of two moves that turn over the same number of cards, take the one that starts the longer run, because every card cleared without drawing saves a stock card for later.

Three ways a run dies

Where TriPeaks deals stall

Chasing the longest run

A long run feels like the whole game, and it is the tip most guides lead with. As the figures above show, it is one of the weakest habits we measured: a long run that turns nothing over spends your face-up cards and leaves you with fewer choices.

Leaving the peaks face down

Every face-down card is an option you cannot use yet. A move that uncovers one gives you a new card to play and tells you something about what is left. When two cards fit the waste, the one that turns another card over is usually the better play, even if the other starts a longer run.

Forgetting that the wrap works both ways

Players who learned Golf first tend not to see king to ace to 2 as a route. In TriPeaks, aces and kings connect like any other rank, so a run can pass straight through them.

Measured on this page's game

Is TriPeaks Solitaire winnable?

Nearly always, if you could see every card; about half the time if you cannot. We played 100,000 shuffled deals through the same game code that runs at the top of this page, and gave every deal to a solver that could see the face-down cards and the stock.

97% of deals can be cleared, which fits the game's inventor, Robert Hogue, who found that over 90% of deals are solvable. The rest are lost from the deal: no order of play clears them.

The gap is in what you cannot see. Careful play that uses only the face-up cards clears 50%, and on 47% of all deals the cards were there to win and careful play still lost. After a loss, the result screen asks the solver whether that deal could have been cleared.

Lost deals end close. Of the careful games that did not clear the peaks, 71% finished just one or two cards short.

Rules that change the odds

TriPeaks' rules, measured side by side

The wrap is worth a lot. We ran the same solver without it on 20,000 of our deals, and forbade drawing while a card fits on all of them.

Even without the wrap, TriPeaks is far more winnable than Golf's 45%. Part of the reason is simple arithmetic: TriPeaks gives you 23 stock cards for 28 peak cards, where Golf gives 16 for 35. Careful play in Golf clears only 3.5%.

Other names

Tri Towers, Three Peaks, and where TriPeaks came from

Robert Hogue invented TriPeaks in 1989. It first shipped in one of Microsoft's Entertainment Packs for Windows and is part of Microsoft Solitaire Collection today. It is also known as Three Peaks, Tri Towers and Triple Peaks.

Many versions keep a score, and some deal every peak card face up, which turns the game into pure planning. This page keeps the classic face-down peaks and no scoring.

Peaks and pyramids

TriPeaks against the other board clearers

Pyramid uses the same two-card blocking on a single triangle but asks for exact partners totalling thirteen rather than a run, which is stricter and slower. If you like the peaks but want no luck at all, Giza puts the pairing rule on a fully visible board with no stock.