In a trick, everyone takes turns playing one card. Whoever plays the highest card in the suit led (the suit of the first card played) picks up all the cards played. Here are the rules for the card game Hearts: The objective of Hearts is to get as few hearts as possible. Each heart gives you one penalty point. There is also a special card, which is the Queen of Spades.

When playing Hearts, at the end of the hand, each player collects all the cards in the taken tricks, and the arithmetic begins. Unlike other card games, Hearts doesn’t tax your math skills unduly. Each player gets 1 point per heart, for a total of 13 penalty points possible in each hand.

The Queen of Spades costs you 13 points on her own. Not surprisingly, therefore, you need to gear your strategy of both passing and playing to avoid taking this card. You may want to pass the Ace and King of Spades, and also the Queen of Spades, before play begins if you have only a few spades. Conversely, if you have length in spades (particularly with some of the low cards), spades don’t propose a danger to you.

You play to 100 points. At that point, you can play that whoever has the fewest points wins. Or if gambling for stakes, you can play that you settle up with everybody paying or receiving the differences in score.

Passing on low spades before play starts is almost certainly a tactical blunder because you help a player guard the Queen of Spades.

Because the penalty associated with the Queen of Spades outweighs that of the individual heart cards, leading spades early (if you can afford to, and as long as you don’t lead the ace or king) often ensures that someone else takes in this card — not you. By leading spades early, you hope to flush out the Queen of Spades, and with that card out of the way, you can’t be too badly hurt on a hand, even if you do win a number of hearts. So long as you don’t leave either the Ace or King of Spades insufficiently protected by small cards, leading spades early is usually safe.

You do have one challenging escape if you get a really terrible hand stuffed full of high cards. If you manage to take all the penalty cards and thus collect 26 points, you finish up doing remarkably well: You have the option of reducing your own score by 26 points or charging everyone else 26 points. This accomplishment is called shooting the moon, and just like becoming an astronaut, it’s a lot easier to do in theory than in practice. The right hand rarely comes along for it, and if your opponents see you trying to take all the tricks, they’ll save a heart or two for the end to take a couple penalty points and prevent you from achieving your aim.

Shooting the moon is more dangerous than it may seem; you lose more points in unsuccessful attempts to shoot the moon than you gain by making it. If you have a very good hand, you may choose to take an early trick with one or two points in it just to stop anyone else from trying to shoot the moon. Alternatively, you can give hearts to two different players to accomplish the same result with less discomfort to yourself.

Scoring variations in Hearts flourish as thickly as weeds on a lawn. Here, listed in descending order of frequency, are some of the most common additional scoring rules (you can play them simultaneously or not at all):

• Shooting the sun, as opposed to the moon, involves taking all the tricks as well as all the penalty points. You get a 52-point bonus for shooting the sun.

• Counting the Jack of Diamonds — or, in some circles, the 10 of Diamonds — as a bonus card is quite common. Winning the trick with that card in it has real merit because it reduces your penalty points by 11 (or 10, in the case of the 10 of Diamonds). If you have fewer penalty points than 10, you can even finish up being plus for the hand.

  If you allow shooting the moon, you generally don’t need to take the Jack of Diamonds to shoot the moon, but some versions of the game require that you win this card, too.

  Implementing the rule about the Jack of Diamonds influences which cards you decide to pass on. You may want to keep the top diamonds in order to try for the prize. However, you may find capturing the Jack of Diamonds is easier if you pass it on. In high-level games, you’re unlikely to find players winning tricks in diamonds early on with this card. In practice, because players rarely get the chance to take an early diamond trick with this card, it tends to get discarded at the end of the hand.

• If you manage to score exactly 100 points, your score is immediately halved to 50 points. Some versions play that if you avoid scoring any points on the next hand, you further reduce your score to zero.

• The 10 of Clubs can be a potentially lethal card if you play the rule that the card doubles the value of the penalty points for whoever takes it. For example, capturing the 10 of Clubs and three heart cards costs you 6 points, not 3. Shift vape pen instructions.

• The Ace of Hearts may be charged at 5 points, not 1.

• Anyone who avoids winning a trick in a hand may be credited with -5 points.

Want to learn how to play Hearts while picking up tactics and terminology along the way?
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THE ORIGIN

Hearts is a popular card game played with a standard set of 52 playing cards and is closely related to other trick-taking games like Bridge and Spades. Usually, it’s played with 4 players but can also be played with 3 or 5 people (see below for different variations).

WHAT IS THE OBJECT OF HEARTS?

The object of Hearts is to avoid scoring points. You earn points for every heart you take and if you end up with the Queen of Spades you are stuck with 13 points. The game ends when someone reaches or goes over 100 points and whoever has the lowest score at that point wins. If there is a tie for a low score when someone hits or exceeds 100 points, additional hands may be played until someone wins.

HOW TO DEAL THE CARDS

Shuffle and deal the entire card deck so that each person has 13 cards.

HOW TO PLAY A HAND

Whoever has the 2 of Clubs must start the game. The game will continue in a clockwise order, with the next player having to play a card in the same suit, if possible. If not, they can play any card. The person who plays the highest card of the suit wins the trick and will lead the next one.

You may not lead with a heart until after a heart has been played as a discard. When you discard a heart it is called Breaking Hearts.

BASIC TACTICS

A normal tactic when you play Hearts is to lead with a lower spade to try to drive out the Queen of Spades, which is known as Smoking Out The Queen.

Another tactic is to lead with the suit in your hand that you have the least amount of. That way you can get rid of the suit and start playing your hearts.

SCORING

You earn 1 point for every heart you take in the trick. If you take the Queen of Spades then you earn 13 points. The person with the lowest points wins and when someone reaches 100 points, the game is over.

However, if a player manages to win all the hearts cards including the Queen of Spades, they can choose to either reduce their score by 26 points or have all other players’ scores increase by 26 points. This is known as a Slam or Shooting The Moon.

Another variation is to make the Jack of Diamonds (or in some cases the Ten of Diamonds) a bonus card, subtracting 10 points for the person taking it. If it’s decided to play with this rule, you must agree whether or not you have to take the Jack (or Ten) of Diamonds in order to shoot the moon. If a player does shoot the moon, scoring will be normal (the player who took the card has 10 points deducted).

Shooting The Sun is taking all the tricks. Some score this as 52 points with the scoring handled in the same way as shooting the moon.

Some people play that when reaching a certain score it has a special effect. One is that if at the end of a hand your score is 100, it is reduced to 50 or sometimes 0.

PLAYING IN PARTNERS

There are a couple of ways that 4 players can play Hearts while sitting across from each other:

1. Keep tricks together. If one team takes all 14 penalty cards in a hand, this is called a Slam and you can choose to give the other team 26 penalty points or subtract the same amount from your team.
2. Keep scores individual until a player reaches 100 points, then tally the scores of the partners. The partnership with fewer points wins.

EXTRA STUFF

VARIATIONS FOR PASSING

There are a few other passing variations that can be done:

• Pass left, pass right, pass across, then repeat
• Scatter(pass one card to every other player)
• No passing (pass on the cards passed to them without looking at them)
  

OTHER NUMBERS OF PLAYERS

Hearts can be played with either 3 or 5 players. There are different ways to deal the cards out equally with an uneven amount of players:

1. Deal out the cards evenly as far as they’ll go until there are 1 or 2 cards left over. These cards are The Kitty and will be placed face down in the middle of the table. Whoever takes the first trick takes these cards (yes, they can look at them) and places them with their captured cards. If the 2 of Clubs happens to be in the kitty, the person who holds the next lowest club must lead.
2. Deal out the cards the same way as above but whoever takes the first point or trick must add them to their hand and discard the equal number of cards face down.
3. With 3 or 5 players, remove the 2 of Clubs from the deck, allowing the person holding the 3 of Clubs to lead.

TERMINOLOGY

Still haven’t picked up on the slang yet? Here’s a cheat sheet so you can keep up with the pros while you play Hearts.

Shoot The Moon: When you win all the hearts and the Queen of Spades you gain no points yet every other player gains 26 points. In some versions, you have the option to take 26 points off your score.

Shoot The Sun: Taking all the tricks. Some score this as 52 points with the scoring handled in the same way as shooting the moon.

Painting The Trick: Playing a heart when void of the lead suit.

Breaking Hearts: The first heart played in a round.

Smoking Out The Queen:Leading a trick with a lower spade to try to drive out the Queen of Spades.

Heart Attack: When a player claims 4 hearts in one trick.

Slippery Annie: AKAThe Queen of Spades.

Now that you’re a Hearts pro it’s time to test our your newly acquired skills on Simple Hearts!

Vicky is an Ottawa-based Content Marketing Manager at Magmic who, when not writing about mobile marketing, can be found exploring (and writing about) adventures in the mountains. Some of her hobbies are: Trail running, car dancing, reading, chasing dogs and trying strange food from far away places.