How to Play Hearts

Hearts is a trick-taking card game where the aim is to take as few points as possible. Every heart you win costs you 1 point and the Queen of spades costs 13. When someone reaches 100, the player with the lowest score wins. It is usually played by four players, each on their own, and came free with Microsoft Windows for years, which made it one of the best-known card games in the world. This guide explains how to play Hearts step by step: the deal and the pass, the play, scoring and shooting the moon, the rules for three and five players, popular variations, strategy and the odds.

Hearts Card Game Rules at a Glance

How to Play Hearts

1. Deal. Shuffle and deal the whole pack face down, one card at a time, clockwise. With four players everyone gets 13 cards.
2. Pass three cards. Each player chooses three cards and places them face down for the player to their left. Only after passing do you pick up the three cards passed to you.
3. Lead the 2 of clubs. Whoever holds the 2 of clubs, after the pass, leads it to the first trick.
4. Follow suit. Going clockwise, each player plays one card of the suit that was led if they can. If you have none of that suit, you can play any card.
5. Win the trick. The highest card of the suit led wins. Cards of other suits can never win, because there are no trumps. The winner places the trick face down in front of them and leads to the next trick.
6. No points on the first trick. If you have no clubs on the first trick, you cannot throw a heart or the Queen of spades on it.
7. Breaking hearts. You cannot lead a heart until a heart (or the Queen of spades) has been thrown on an earlier trick, unless you have nothing but hearts left. The Queen of spades can be led at any time.
8. Count the points. When all 13 tricks have been played, each player counts the hearts and the Queen of spades in the tricks they won. Add the points to their score and deal again.

The Pass

Passing is what makes Hearts different from most trick-taking games. You pass in a four-hand cycle:

The cycle then starts again. The pass lets you get rid of dangerous cards, such as the Queen, King and Ace of spades or high hearts, but remember that the player you pass to knows exactly which three cards you sent.

Scoring and Shooting the Moon

The points in a hand always add up to 26. Taking every penalty card is called shooting the moon. It is a big gamble: if another player takes even one heart, you are left holding a lot of points. In some games the shooter can choose to take 26 off their own score instead of adding 26 to everyone else.

Hearts for Three, Five or Two Players

• Three players: take out the 2 of diamonds (some take out the 2 of clubs instead) and deal 17 cards each. A common passing cycle is left, then right, then hold.
• Five players: take out the 2 of clubs and the 2 of diamonds and deal 10 cards each. The holder of the 3 of clubs leads first.
• Six players: take out four low cards (one common choice is the 2 and 3 of clubs and the 2s of diamonds and spades) and deal 8 cards each.
• Partnership Hearts: four players in two teams, with partners sitting opposite. Each team adds together the points in its tricks.
• Two players: the normal game does not work well, because you always know where every card is. Special two-player versions exist, such as one played with a dummy hand.

Popular Hearts Variations

A Short History of Hearts

Hearts probably comes from Reversis, a Spanish game from around 1750 in which players also tried to avoid tricks. Hearts itself appeared in the United States in the 1880s. In early versions only the hearts counted. The Queen of spades was added around 1909, in a game called Black Lady, along with the pass. Shooting the moon came later, and the version most people play today is really Black Lady under another name. Microsoft included Hearts with Windows from the early 1990s until Windows 7.

Hearts Strategy

• Pass the dangerous cards. The Queen of spades is the obvious one, but the Ace and King of spades are almost as risky: they win spade tricks, and the Queen can land on them.
• Keep the Queen if you hold plenty of spades. With four or five spades you can usually protect her and throw her on someone else later.
• Make a void. Passing all your cards in one short suit, often clubs or diamonds, lets you throw hearts and the Queen once that suit is led.
• Smoke out the Queen. If you don’t hold the Queen, the Ace or the King of spades, lead low spades again and again. Whoever has the Queen may be forced to play her.
• Keep low cards for later. Low hearts and low cards in each suit let you lose the lead late in the hand, when a high card would pick up a full trick of points.
• Watch for a moon shot. If one player is winning every trick with hearts in them, keep one heart back and take a trick to stop them.

The pass matters more than many players think. In 40,000 simulated hands between simple computer players, one player who passed three cards at random took 8.1 penalty points a hand on average. Passing the three most dangerous cards (the Queen, Ace and King of spades, then the highest hearts) cut that to 6.8. That is about 13 points saved every ten hands.

Hearts Odds

• The Queen of spades is in your hand at the deal one time in four (25%).
• A short Queen: when you are dealt her, 42% of the time you have two or fewer other spades to protect her with. That is when passing her is usually right.
• Five or more hearts are dealt to you in 18% of hands.
• A void (no cards at all in one suit) is dealt to you 5.1% of the time, and no hearts at all 1.3%.
• Shooting the moon is rare: the simple computer players in the simulation managed it in only about 2 to 3 hands in 100.

More Card Games

If you like Hearts, try Spades, its partnership cousin, as well as Cribbage, Gin Rummy, Crazy Eights and Golf.

Another trick-taking game where every trick counts: Oh Hell, also called Up and Down the River.

Hearts: frequently asked questions