The layout
Twenty-eight cards form three overlapping peaks, all face-down except the ones on top. The rest of the deck becomes your stock, flipped one card at a time onto a waste pile that becomes the card you play against.
How you play
- The card on the waste pile is your current rank.
- You may take any exposed peak card that is one rank higher or one rank lower than it.
- Aces connect to Kings, so the sequence never dead-ends at the top or bottom.
- A peak card becomes exposed when both cards covering it have been removed.
- Turn a new stock card any time you are stuck — or any time you choose to.
You can flip the stock even when a legal move exists. That freedom is the whole game: knowing when to take a move and when to hold for a better one is what separates a short game from a long one.
The streak is the score
Most versions reward consecutive clears without flipping the stock. A streak does not just look good — it is usually how you win, because it means you found a chain of ranks that carried you across the peaks without burning cards.
Strategy: keep your options open
- When two cards are both playable, take the one that uncovers more. Removing a card that reveals two others is worth more than removing a card that reveals none.
- Prefer moves that keep the rank you are on. If you can play a 7 and then another 7 on the next card down, your rank stays put and your streak survives.
- Save the stock for genuine dead ends. Every stock flip you avoid is a card you did not waste.
- Look one step ahead. Before you play a card, check whether the rank you are about to land on has a follow-up available.
Why you get stuck
A stuck board almost always comes from clearing the wrong card earlier — taking a card that was convenient at the time and leaving a rank with no neighbour behind it. The fix is not to play faster; it is to scan the exposed ranks before each move and play the one that leaves you somewhere to go next.
Put it into practice on TriPeaks Solitaire. If you want the wider picture of how TriPeaks compares to Klondike and Spider, Solitaire rules has the full family laid out.
