Play Thirteens Solitaire — Pair to Thirteen Across Ten Open Piles

Thirteens is a single-deck pairing patience with the simplest board in the whole catalogue: ten piles, one card showing on each, and a talon of forty-two cards waiting behind them. You take two cards away together whenever their values add up to thirteen — ace with queen, two with jack, three with ten, and so on down to six with seven. A king is worth thirteen on its own, so it leaves alone. Every pile a removal empties refills itself from the talon straight away, so the board keeps its shape until the talon runs dry. Clear all fifty-two cards to win. Also known as Helsinki and Good Thirteen. Free in your browser, no sign-up, and it works offline once the page has loaded.

How Do You Play Thirteens?

Goal: remove all 52 cards in pairs that total thirteen, plus kings on their own.

Setup

• Ten piles: one card each, face-up, dealt in a single row.
• Talon: the remaining 42 cards, face-down beside the row.
• No foundations and no building. Cards only ever leave the game; nothing is ever stacked on anything.

Rules

• Card values are ace 1, pip cards their face value, jack 11, queen 12, king 13.
• Click two exposed cards whose values add up to thirteen to remove them both. The legal pairs are A+Q, 2+J, 3+10, 4+9, 5+8 and 6+7.
• A king is thirteen by itself. One click removes it — it needs no partner and never takes one.
• Suits and colours are ignored entirely. Only the value counts.
• A pile emptied by a removal immediately turns the next talon card face-up into the space. You never choose this and it never offers you an option.
• You win when the talon is empty and every pile is empty. You lose the moment no legal removal exists anywhere on the board.

What's the Best Thirteens Strategy?

• Take kings the moment you see them. A king occupies a pile and can never help another card. Every turn it sits there is a turn the board is nine piles wide instead of ten. There is no reason to hold one back.
• Count what each rank still needs. There are four of every rank, so each partner rank has exactly four matches in the deck. If three sevens have gone and only one six remains unseen, the last seven has one partner left in fifty-two cards. Clear the plentiful ranks early while their partners are still common.
• Do not clear two piles at once when one will do. Every removal is forced to refill, so a pair costs you the two cards you knew about and hands back two you do not. Prefer the pair that leaves the rest of the board unchanged.
• Watch for a board of one parity. Low cards pair with high cards, never with each other. A row of eight small cards is a dead board waiting to happen — take the high cards while you still have them to pair against.
• Late in the talon, slow down. Once the talon is thin, refills stop rescuing you. The last dozen cards decide the game, and a pair taken carelessly at that point can strand two ranks that would otherwise have met.

A Short History

Pairing games that total thirteen are among the oldest recorded patiences, and Pyramid is the famous one — the same arithmetic played on a triangle of twenty-eight cards. Thirteens strips the shape away and keeps only the sum. Because every card on the board is exposed, nothing is blocked and nothing is hidden except the order of the talon, which makes it a much faster game than Pyramid and a considerably more forgiving one. It is catalogued under three names: Thirteens, Helsinki, and Good Thirteen, all describing the same ten-pile deal. The open-source PySolFC collection, which the rules here follow, records it as a game of luck rather than skill — an honest label, since a bad talon order can end the game whatever you do. That said, the choices you make about which pair to take, and when, decide a good share of deals.

About This Version

This Thirteens runs in your browser — free, no download, no sign-up. Install it as an app on your phone or computer; once installed it works offline. Unlimited undo, statistics, and a daily challenge that gives every player the same deal that day.

Other Solitaire Games to Try

• Neptune — the same board, but pair by adjacent rank instead
• Pyramid — the thirteen rule on a twenty-eight card triangle
• Monte Carlo — match same-rank pairs on a compacting grid
• TriPeaks — three-peak rank matching with a high win rate