Rules of Hearts
- Hearts Online is the best FREE multi-player Hearts game available for Windows. Just press play and you are matched up with human players from all around the world. Want to play with your friends? Create custom games for them to join. There are multiple scoring modes and rule sets for you to choose from, so gameplay never gets old!
- Hearts multiplayer game. Card game for four players; avoid taking tricks with penalty cards in hearts suit and queen of spades; support for passing cards, shooting the moon; member of whist card games family; play hearts online, internet hearts card game.
- Players can enjoy Hearts on 247 Hearts with other players because of Artificial Intelligence. Each level of Hearts, Easy, Medium, Hard, and Expert or made more challenging or less so by advances in AI. If you are a beginner, try your hand against the card players in our Easy Hearts game.
Here are the rules for the card game Hearts:
Hearts is an 'evasion-type' trick-taking card game, where you play against 3 other opponents and try to earn the lowest score by avoiding hearts.and especially by avoiding the 13-point Queen of Spades!
- 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. It gives you 13 penalty points! This is a game where you want a lower score rather than high.
- To begin, each player will be dealt 13 cards. You'll then select three cards when the game begins to pass to one of the opponents. Typically it's best to pass your three worst cards to try and get rid of them. The opponent which you pass to varies (we'll handle that part for you), you start by passing to the opponent on your left. Then, in the following game you pass to your opponent on the right. For the third game you pass straight across the table and in the 4th game you keep your cards and do not pass any.
- The player who has the 2 of clubs at the beginning leads in the first hand, and that player has to lead with the 2 of clubs.
- Each turn begins with one player laying a single card, which is called 'leading.' That card's suit determines the suit of the trick. Then each of the players each plays one card.
- If they have a card in the same suit as the first card then that suit must be played. If not, they can play any of their other cards. Once 4 cards have been played, the player who played the highest ranking card takes the trick. This means he or she takes the 4 cards on the table and starts the next turn. Any penalty cards (any hearts or queen of spades) the trick are added to the player's penalty score. Try to avoid these unless you are shooting the moon which we'll touch on later.
- You may not lead a trick with hearts until hearts has been played on another suit (aka 'broken'). If it is your turn to lead and no hearts have been played thus far, you cannot select a heart as the card to play. In some versions of game Hearts you cannot play the Queen of Spades until hearts has been broken, but in this variation you can always play the queen of spades and it doesn't break hearts.
- In the first round you may not play a heart or the queen of spades, even if you do not possess any card in the suit of the starting card.
- After all cards have been played, the penalty points are counted and the player with the smallest number of points wins that particular hand. When one of the players reaches at least 100 points then the game is finished, and the player with the least number of points is the winner. If points are over 100 and there are 2 or more equal with the fewest points then play will continue until there is only one clear winner.
- Back to 'shooting the moon.' Typically it is not good to get penalty cards, but there is a circumstance where it can hugely benefit you. If you get ALL the penalty cards (thirteen hearts and the Queen of Spades) then you get zero points and all other players get 26 points each. Trying this can be a somewhat risky move, since if another player gets just one of the hearts you will end up with lots of points. Alright, now that we've we've got that down let's play some Hearts!
Hearts is a trick-taking card game for four players. The game is also known as Black Lady and is one of the most popular evasion-type of games. The main goal is to avoid hearts suit and Queen of Spades in winning tricks. Those cards are giving penalty points.
See our additional tips about Hearts rules, dealing & scoring.
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History of Hearts Card Game
The card game Hearts became popular around 1750 in Spain. In this game, a penalty point was awarded for each trick won, plus additional points for capturing J♥ or Q♥. Over time, additional penalty cards were added to Reversis, and around 1850, the game gave way to a simple variant of Hearts, where each heart was worth 1 point. The Q♠ was introduced in a variant called Black Maria which then became known as the standard Hearts game, and soon thereafter, the idea of “shooting the moon” was introduced to the game to add depth to the gameplay. Passing cards, breaking hearts, leading 2♣ are more recent additions.
The goal of the game is to not win any tricks containing Hearts or the Queen of Spades or to collect all the Hearts and the Queen of Spades. Each Heart card gives you 1 point and the Queen of Spades gives 13 points. If you collect all the Hearts and Q of Spades though, you score 0 points and all of your opponents score 26 points instead. It is called Shooting the Moon. The scope of the game is to collect as few penalty points as you can. The winner of the game is the one that has the lowest score.
Dealing and playing is clockwise. Each player receives 13 cards and is asked to pass 3 cards in the beginning and receives other 3 cards by another player.- In the first round, the cards are passed to the player to the left.
- In the second round, the cards are passed to the player to the right.
- In the third round, the cards are passed to the opposite player.
- In the fourth round, there is no passing.
The game starts with the player who has the 2 of Clubs. The players are obliged to follow the suite and if they cannot they can give any other card. The one who plays the highest ranked card wins the trick and has to initiate the next trick.
There are certain conditions that have to be followed before you can play Hearts or the Queen of Spades:
- You can’t play them on the first trick.
- You can’t lead a Heart before someone “breaks the Hearts”.
- You can lead a Heart if you do not have any other card in your hands.
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