How to play Hearts?

Table of Contents

The Players
The Pack
The Objective
The Deal
The Pass
The Play
The Score

What is the game of hearts?

Hearts is a classic trick-taking, four-player card game. It combines elements of both luck and skill, but it is primarily considered a game of skill.  While some players get lucky with the distribution of cards from the deal, skilled players can employ various strategies and tactics to minimize their point accumulation and increase their chances of winning. How do you win hearts? The goal of Hearts is to accumulate the fewest points of all the players and be declared the winner.  Players get points by taking tricks with any heart card and also the Queen of Spades, so the goal is to avoid taking tricks where these point-carrying cards are in play.

The Players

Hearts is a four-player card game.

The Pack

Hearts is played with a standard 52-card deck, 2 through ace of each suit.

 

The Objective

What is the object of hearts game? Hearts is a trick-taking card game. The object of the game is to accumulate the fewest points. Hearts are worth one point each, and the Queen of Spades is worth thirteen points. While the game is called Hearts, the main goal for players is to avoid the Queen of Spades.

The Deal

Players each draw a card and the player who draws the lowest card is the dealer.

The dealer deals the cards one at a time, face down, clockwise. Each player receives 13 cards.

The Pass

After the deal, players organize their cards by suit.  For the pass, each player selects three cards from their hand to give away. Unless a player is shooting the moon, the cards passed are typically high cards that could win a trick. 

For the first hand, players pass to the left.  For the second hand, players pass to the right.  Players exchange cards with a player opposite them for the third hand, and there is no passing for the fourth hand.  The pass process starts over for the fifth hand.

The Play

A trick is the set of four cards, one from each player.  The first card played for each trick is called the lead card, and the lead card to start each game is the 2 of clubs.

Once the player leads with the two of clubs, play continues clockwise.  Players must follow suit, if possible. If a player cannot follow suit, then the player can discard any card from their hand.  This is an opportunity for players to discard hearts, the queen of spades or any high cards, ace being the highest.  However, for the first trick only, a player with no clubs cannot play a heart or the queen of spades.  

The trick is won by the player who plays the highest card in the lead suit. The winner takes the trick and leads the next. Play continues until players are out of cards. 

A player cannot play a heart as the lead card until a heart has been played on another suit or if that is the only suit in hand.

The Score

What are the rules of hearts scoring? After the last trick is played, players count the number of hearts in their tricks won as well as the Queen of Spades. Hearts count as 1 point each and the Queen of Spades counts 13 points. There are 26 points to each hand.

Shooting the Moon!  Generally, players want to avoid getting points, but there is one exception. If a player collects all points (13 hearts and the queen of spades) then the player gets 0 points, and the other three players get 26 points each. This is called shooting the moon.

Games are played to a predetermined point threshold (usually 100 points) and the player with the lowest score wins.