TriPeaks: History, Records and Competitions

Unlike patience games that go back centuries, TriPeaks is a computer-era game, and it first went on sale in a 1991 games pack for Windows 3.0. Here is who made it, and which popular stories hold up and which don't, checked against the original files and documents.

September 23, 2026 · 7-minute read

Name and origin

TriPeaks is what it sounds like: three peaks. Twenty-eight cards are dealt in three overlapping peaks, and you clear any card one rank above or below the top card of the waste pile, whatever its suit.

The game is credited to Robert Hogue. The 1991 Microsoft program (TRIPEAKS.EXE, dated 12 September 1991) carries the signature "A RHogue Child", and Hogue's own websites (therhogue.com around 2001, later rhogue.com) offered that original for download next to his own newer versions. The program itself, though, names only "RHogue"; the first name Robert comes from Wikipedia and the sites that copy it.

At heart it is a Golf-family game. Solitaire Central describes TriPeaks as Golf's way of playing laid out on a Pyramid-like tableau, and Wikipedia's Golf article lists it among the best-known Golf variants. Strict Golf allows nothing on a King and never wraps between King and Ace; the 1991 TriPeaks did wrap. TriPeaks doesn't turn up in the patience books of David Parlett or of Morehead and Mott-Smith either. It is a computer-era game.

Timeline

The Entertainment Pack 3 disk files are dated 13 September 1991, and Wikipedia gives October 1991 for the release. Of the pack's eight titles, SkiFree and TetraVex among them, TriPeaks was the only card game. The 1994 compilation reused the 1991 file unchanged.

The 1991 original: scored in dollars

The first Entertainment Pack sold for $39.95 under the slogan "Now you can use the incredible power of Windows 3.0 to goof off". The TriPeaks help file set the goal like this: "Your goal is to earn a higher score than anyone else in the history of the game. Your success will depend on your perseverance, memory, and luck." And the score was money.

• Each card turned from the face-down pile cost $5.
• Cards played in a row from the peaks paid $1, $2, $3 and so on, so three in a row earned $6. Clearing all 28 without a single draw paid "a whopping $406" (1+2+…+28).
• The first two peaks cleared paid a $15 bonus each, and the last one $30.
• Quitting or redealing cost $5 for every card left in the peaks.

The peaks had names — Ahmadas, Gehaldi and Zackheer — and clearing the last one told you that you had "Tri-Conquered". The Hall of Fame came pre-filled with joke names such as "Stone the IceMan" and "Braggart Billy". Of the Reset command, which wiped your cumulative score, the help file jokes: "If you finish a deal and you are in the red, just Reset -- unless you feel guilty. (No one is watching!)"

One rule line stands out: "Aces are considered one higher than Kings and one lower than Two cards." From the very first version you could put an Ace on a King and a Two on that Ace. Today's standard deal puts the upper 18 peak cards face down and the bottom 10 face up, turns one of the other 24 to start the waste pile, and goes through the stock once. Solitaire Till Dawn's scoring (one more point for each card in a run, −5 per draw, peak bonuses of 15, 15 and 30) uses the same values as the original dollars, though every implementation scores a little differently.

The internet and mobile era

Hogue kept making TriPeaks himself and giving it away. The TriPeaks 2001 beta advertised internet high scores; later came TriPeaks FX for Windows Vista and the Silverlight web version TriPeaksLite, which shared an online leaderboard called the Global TriList. By 2009 TriPeaks 2001 was no longer supported, and rhogue.com is now a parked domain.

Microsoft Solitaire Collection, launched with Windows 8 on 26 October 2012, bundles five games: Klondike, Spider, FreeCell, Pyramid and TriPeaks. For TriPeaks that was a return to Windows, not a debut. iOS and Android versions followed in 2016.

On phones, TriPeaks became big business. GSN Games' Solitaire TriPeaks (worldwide launch announced in 2014) was, by Sensor Tower's count, the No. 2 grossing tabletop mobile game in the US for the year from August 2020, and in 2021 Scopely announced it would buy GSN Games from Sony Pictures Entertainment for about $1 billion. Solitaire Grand Harvest, a level-based TriPeaks game released in 2017 by the Austrian studio Supertreat, became part of Playtika when Playtika bought the studio in January 2019. Citing AppMagic estimates, PocketGamer.biz (June 2025) put its lifetime player spending at about $1.5 billion, the only mobile solitaire game past the billion-dollar mark. These are third-party estimates, not company figures. Many mobile versions also hand you one wild card per game.

Common myths

• "In the original, the King was a stopper." Solitaire Central and MobilityWare say so, but the 1991 help file links King and Ace. There is no evidence that an earlier prototype was different.
• "An Ace counts as both 1 and 11." Not a TriPeaks rule. In the original an Ace is 1 and meets the King only through the wrap-around.
• "TriPeaks first appeared in Solitaire Royale." That 1987 collection has Golf and Pyramid, but no TriPeaks.
• "TriPeaks came to Windows in 2012." It had been on Windows since 1991.
• "Over 90% of deals are solvable; typical players average 12 and good players over 17." Added to Wikipedia in 2012 by an anonymous IP with the note "based on statistical work done by the inventor", and never cited. The line about Las Vegas casino games, from the same uncited 2006 edit as the 1989 date, is unverified too.
• "Hogue mathematically compared layouts and chose three peaks." Repeated without a source; nothing documents his design intent.

Competitions, records and community

Offline: no documented events

No offline TriPeaks tournament, championship or Guinness record could be found. It is a one-player game, so there is little reason to gather in one room, and competing naturally means seeing who plays the same deal faster or better. The "World Solitaire Championship" whose finals took place in Miami in February 2026 did not say TriPeaks was the game played. For solitaire competition in general, see Solitaire Competitions and Communities.

Online

• Microsoft Solitaire's 25th anniversary (2015). Microsoft employees competed from 18 May, and on 22 June the challenges from that tournament went public as the "25th Anniversary Star Club Collection", covering Klondike, FreeCell, Spider, TriPeaks and Pyramid. In the US the first 250 players to finish and post proof got a $25 gift code; no winners or results from the public side have been published.
• WorldWinner. GSN's skill-game site opened a TriPeaks game based on the GSN app in 2017, playable for free or for cash and prizes. Players compete on their own time rather than at a live event.
• Microsoft Solitaire Collection Daily Challenges. One challenge per game every day, TriPeaks included.

Speedruns and community

speedrun.com has TriPeaks leaderboards. As of 23 September 2026, the 1991 game's "Clean Table%" record is 38 seconds by Retiu (1 June 2025). For Microsoft Solitaire Collection TriPeaks, the 1-, 2- and 3-board records are 7, 23 and 43 seconds, all set by Momose_Kaguya on 28 June 2023. Records can change. The player-run MobilityWare Solitaire Forum (solitaireforum.com) posts its best result for each daily deal of the MobilityWare app, counted in cards left. It was still posting daily in September 2026, and it is a solving community, not a prize contest.

Competing on this site

This site's TriPeaks links Ace and King like the 1991 original, but unlike the standard game it deals all 28 peak cards face up. There is no undo; the reasons are on the rules page.

• One deal number, one layout. The same number gives the same peaks and the same stock order, so the luck of the deal is the same for everyone.
• Solvable deals only. The solver actually plays each deal before its number opens. Of 5,000 deals, 153 (3.1%) could not be solved and were given a different layout. The solver knows the stock order, so this is not a human win rate.
• Two rankings instead of a score. Each number has a fastest-time and a fewest-moves ranking. A win is 28 takes plus however many draws, so fewest moves really means fewest draws. You need a name to keep records.

How to chase those rankings is covered in the TriPeaks Strategy Guide.

Sources

1. TriPeaks : Microsoft (1991 executable) — Internet Archive
2. TRIPEAKS.HLP (original 1991 help file) — rhogue.com, archived 2009
3. TriPeaks — rhogue.com, archived 2009
4. TriPeaks — therhogue.com, archived 2001
5. Tri Peaks (game) — Wikipedia
6. Tri Peaks (game), revision of 3 February 2006 — Wikipedia
7. Tri Peaks (game), revision of 10 March 2012 — Wikipedia
8. Registration record for 131.107.0.106 — ARIN
9. Microsoft Entertainment Pack 3 — Internet Archive
10. Microsoft Entertainment Pack — Wikipedia
11. Windows Entertainment Pack — Minesweeper history
12. Q130026: Best of Windows Entertainment Pack: Listing of Games — Microsoft Knowledge Base
13. Best of Microsoft Entertainment Pack — Wikipedia
14. Microsoft Solitaire Collection — Wikipedia
15. TriPeaks Solitaire Rules — Solitaire Central
16. Rules for TriPeaks — Semicolon Software (Solitaire Till Dawn)
17. Golf (patience) — Wikipedia
18. Solitaire Royale — Wikipedia
19. How to Play TriPeaks the Card Game — MobilityWare, 2021
20. GSN Games Deals Out New Mobile App 'Solitaire TriPeaks by GSN Games' — GlobeNewswire, 2014
21. U.S. Mobile Tabletop Game Spending Rises by 40% to $704 Million — Sensor Tower, 2021
22. Scopely to acquire GSN Games from Sony Pictures Entertainment — Scopely, 2021
23. Playtika continues push into casual market with Supertreat acquisition — Game Developer, 2019
24. Why are the world's top games publishers making solitaire games? — PocketGamer.biz, 2025
25. Celebrating Microsoft Solitaire — Windows Experience Blog, 2015
26. The 25th Anniversary Star Club Collection is now available — Windows Experience Blog, 2015
27. First-Ever World Solitaire Championship … to Be Held in Miami This February — PR Newswire
28. WorldWinner — Wikipedia
29. TriPeaks (Microsoft) · TriPeaks — speedrun.com
30. TriPeaks Challenge — MobilityWare Solitaire Forum

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