How to play Hearts

The goal

Passing

• You play against three computer players: West, North and East. Each hand everyone gets 13 cards.
• Before each hand, pick three cards and pass them: left, then right, then across, then no pass on every fourth hand.
• The cards you receive are outlined in your hand until the first trick is over.

Playing tricks

• Whoever holds the 2♣ leads it to start the hand. Play goes clockwise: you, West, North, East.
• Follow the suit that was led if you can. If you can’t, play any card.
• The highest card of the suit led wins the trick, and its winner leads the next one. Aces are high.
• No hearts or queen of spades on the first trick, unless you have nothing else.
• Hearts can’t be led until a heart has been played, unless you hold only hearts.

Scoring

• After 13 tricks, each player adds the points in the tricks they took: 1 per heart, 13 for the queen of spades.
• Shooting the moon: take all 13 hearts and the queen and you choose to add 26 to everyone else or take 26 off your own score.
• The game ends when someone reaches 100 at the end of a hand. If the lowest score is tied, play goes on until it isn’t.

Controls

• Tap a card to raise it and tap it again to play it. With a mouse, one click plays it. You can also drag a card up to the middle.
• Cards you can’t play are faded. The line above your hand says what to do.
• Name tags show each player’s total, and their points and tricks this hand. The list button opens the score sheet.
• Undo takes back your last card (or your pass) and the computer players’ replies.

Difficulty

• Easy players often make careless plays. Normal players count cards, duck under winning cards, dump the queen and high cards when they can, and stop moon shots.
• Hard players weigh every card by playing out the rest of the hand hundreds of times with the unseen cards dealt at random.
• Your record is kept separately for each difficulty.

Questions

Strategy guides