The 3 Best Ways To Play Hearts

First round - left Second round - right Third round - across Fourth round - you keep your cards Fifth round - left Sixth round - right Seventh round - across

Hearts (♥) are worth one point, the queen of spades (Q♠) is worth thirteen points, and points are bad, like golf.

The one exception to the lead card being able to be anything is that the lead card cannot be a Heart until Hearts have been “broken”. Hearts are broken when a player is unable to follow the suit of a lead card and plays a Heart instead.

In each suit, the cards are ranked from the Ace (the highest value) on down, with 2 being the lowest value. For example, the Ace of Clubs is the most powerful Club, followed by the King of Clubs, the Queen, and so on. So, for example, if the person who led the trick played a Queen of Diamonds and we have an Ace of Diamonds and a Five of Diamonds in our hand, we have to play one of these Diamonds. The Ace will win the hand for us because it’s the highest card of the same suit as the lead card, while the Five won’t beat the Queen. In most cases, since we usually don’t want to win hands, we’ll probably play the Five.

There is one important exception to the goal of avoiding points. If, in a given hand, a player manages to collect ALL the points from that hand (this is called “Shooting the Moon” or “Running”), s/he receives a score of 0 and all other players receive 26 points. So, if a player is losing badly and has collected every point card in the hand so far, he or she may risk an even-worse score by trying to collect every Heart and the Queen of Spades. If he or she can do it, he or she will have scored a major victory, but if one of his/her opponents gets just one of the point cards, he or she will be left with a bad score for the hand.

Play continues in this fashion until one player reaches some agreed-upon number of points (often 100 points). When one (or more) players reach this point limit, the game stops and whichever player has the fewest points wins.

After being dealt cards, each player passes three cards of his choosing to another player. Usually, in a 4-person game, players pass to the player to the left at the start of the first hand, then to the right on the second hand, then across on the third, then refrain from passing on the fourth, then repeat this cycle. The player who is dealt the Two of Clubs (or is passed it) starts each hand, rather than the player to the left of the dealer. This player must lead with the Two of Clubs as her first play of the game. The “hole” cards leftover after dealing the deck out to a number of players other than 4 are given (face down) to whoever takes the first heart. On the first trick of each hand, no point card may be played. In some variations, if a player shoots the moon, he has the option to subtract 26 points from his score rather than adding 26 points to the other players’. This is a good idea if adding 26 points to everyone else’s scores would put one or more players over the score limit, ending the game and causing the shooter to lose.

Another passing strategy is to “short-suit” yourself (see below). Passing direction changes every hand. On the first hand, pass to the player left of you. On the second hand, pass to the right. On the third hand, pass to the player across from you. On the fourth hand, no cards are passed. At the fifth hand, the cycle starts again. There may be different house rules on passing depending on where you play.

On the first trick of each hand, no points (Hearts or the Queen of Spades) may be played, even by a player who can’t follow suit. Such a player must play a card of a non-scoring suit.

There are exceptions to this generality - for instance, if you’re trying to shoot the moon, you may want to play high cards, or if you’ve been keeping track of the cards being played and think it’s likely that everyone has at least one card of a certain suit, you may want to lead high. You also may be forced to lead high as you run out of cards. As noted above, you can’t lead with a Heart until Hearts are broken when a player lacks a card in the suit that has been led, so he or she throws down a heart instead. As also noted above, most common Hearts variations don’t allow Hearts to be broken on the first trick. The exception to these rules is when a player has voided all other suits and possesses only Hearts.

If you don’t have cards of the same suit as the lead card, you usually want to either play a point card so that whoever wins the trick will gain points or get rid of a high-value off-suit card so that you’re less likely to win tricks in the future.

One way to short-suit yourself (or, at the very least, prepare to do so) is via the “pass” at the beginning of the hand. If you have, for instance, four Clubs in your hand and you pass three to another player, you’ll have only one Club left to get rid of before you’re short-suited (assuming another player doesn’t pass you any additional Clubs).

Remember that if no one can follow the suit of the lead card, the player who leads wins the trick automatically. Use this to your advantage. If it seems like everyone is out of a certain suit, lead with cards of this suit, starting with your highest and working to your lowest, and you’ll collect tons of points.