Golf & adjacency · The Fairway
Build long clearing runs across three connected peaks. Only exposed cards can move, and each play must be exactly one rank above or below the current waste top.
Clear the three peaks by playing exposed cards one rank higher or lower than the waste top.
Tri Peaks applies Golf's rank-adjacency removal rule to three overlapping pyramids sharing a ten-card base. The base cards begin face up and available; removing them opens hidden cards above. Each upper card needs both of its covering positions cleared before it can be played.
Three overlapping pyramids share a ten-card base row. The eighteen cards above the base start face down; a card becomes available when both cards overlapping it from the row below are removed. Base-row cards are face up and available. Of the remaining 24 cards, one starts the waste and 23 remain in stock.
An available card moves to the waste if its rank is exactly one above or below the current waste top. Suits are irrelevant, and Ace–King wraparound is allowed. When no available card fits, draw from the stock. Win by clearing all tableau cards before the stock is exhausted.
Rules source: Tri Peaks (game).
Golf uses a seven-column flat tableau and typically no wraparound. Tri Peaks uses three pyramids and usually allows Ace–King wraparound, making long chains more achievable. Pyramid asks you to pair cards totaling 13; Tri Peaks uses sequential rank adjacency.
The key strategic difference from Golf is the shared base row: in Golf, removing a column card affects only that column. In Tri Peaks, removing a base-row card can simultaneously open cards in two different peaks, making move evaluation two-dimensional.
The middle peak shares base cards with both side peaks — clearing middle-peak cards tends to unlock base cards accessible to all three peaks, giving you the widest rank diversity for continuing chains. Focusing too narrowly on one peak risks leaving the other two locked behind unhelpful base-row ranks.
Before drawing from stock, scan all three peaks and the base row. With three pyramids, it is easy to miss an available card in a far column. A missed removal followed by a stock draw consumes a limited resource unnecessarily.
Tri Peaks is part of The Fairway · Golf & adjacency and is a variant of Golf.