Gamehelphearts

Overview

• Hearts is a card game for 4 players, every player for themselves.
• It uses the standard 52-card pack, ranked A (high) to 2 (low), with the figure cards being KQJ high to low.

Setup

The entire deck is dealt, giving each player a hand of 13 cards. After looking at your hand, choose three cards to pass to another player.

The passing rotation is:

• (1st hand) to the player on your left,
• (2nd hand) to the player across the table,
• (3rd hand) to the player on your right,
• (4th hand) no passing.

The rotation repeats until the game ends.

Tricks

• After passing cards, the player holding the 2 of clubs leads the first trick.
• Each player must follow suit if possible. If you have no cards of the suit led, you may play a card of any suit.
  • Exception: You may not play a heart or the Queen of Spades on the first trick, even if you have no clubs.
• The highest card of the suit led wins the trick. The winner of a trick starts the next trick.
• Hearts may not be led until a heart has been played (this is called "breaking hearts").
  • In traditional Hearts, playing the Queen of Spades also breaks hearts. The Queen of Spades may be lead at any time after the first trick.
• There is no trump suit.

Scoring

• At the end of each hand, each heart taken by a player counts -1, and the Queen of Spades counts -13.
• If one player has taken all 13 hearts and the Queen of Spades (this is known as "shooting the moon", or "slam"), that player scores 0 and all other players score -26. Warning other players about an attempt to shoot the moon is team play, and a breach of Hearts etiquette.
• When one or more players reach zero, the game ends.
• The player with the highest score wins.

Variants

Normal

Game ends at 100 points

Quick

Game ends at 75 points

Modern & Autocomplete

The very popular Modern Variation (in which the "hold" or "no pass" hand is skipped) will be added shortly, along with Autocomplete.