Hearts

How to play Hearts

1. Four players play, each on their own. Playing alone, you take on Purple, Green and Blue. With 2–4 Players, choose how many people are playing: computer players fill the other seats.
2. Each player gets 13 cards. Before the first trick, everyone passes three cards: to the left on the first hand, to the right on the second, across the table on the third, and not at all on the fourth. Then it starts again.
3. The player with the 2 of clubs leads it to the first trick.
4. Everyone must follow suit if they can. If you can't, play any card, except that on the first trick you can't play a heart or the queen of spades unless you have nothing else.
5. There are no trumps: the highest card of the suit led wins the trick, and aces are high. The winner leads the next trick.
6. Hearts can't be led until a heart has been played on an earlier trick (hearts are then "broken"), unless you have nothing but hearts.
7. After 13 tricks, each player counts the cards they won: 1 point for every heart and 13 for the queen of spades. Points are bad.
8. Shooting the moon: a player who wins all 13 hearts and the queen of spades scores nothing, and everyone else scores 26 instead.
9. The game ends when someone reaches 100 points, or 50 for a shorter game. The player with the fewest points wins. If two or more players share the fewest, one more hand is played.

Scoring

There are 26 points in every hand. The score at the top shows each player's total, and the chip by each player shows the points they've taken in the hand so far.

Controls

• Pass three cards: tap three cards in your hand. They rise with a green edge, and tapping one again puts it back. Then tap Pass to…. The three cards you're given are marked in your hand until you play your first card.
• Play a card: tap it. The cards you're allowed to play stand up with a yellow edge.
• Keyboard: use ← and → or Tab to move along your cards, and Enter to choose.

Each card lands on the table in front of the player who played it, and the winning card of each trick lights up before the cards are swept away to the winner. With 2–4 Players, a cover screen hides the cards whenever the device passes to the next person.

Computer levels

The computer players only know what a person in their seat would know: their own cards, the cards they passed and were given, and every card played so far. They never see another hand or the order of the deck. Against the computer, the level you pick is for all three computer players. In a game between people, computer players in the empty seats play at Medium.

Tips to win

• Pass your danger cards. High cards win tricks, and tricks bring points. The queen of spades, the ace and king of spades and high hearts are the usual cards to pass.
• Keep the queen if it's well hidden. With four or five low spades, you can often hold on to the queen of spades and throw it away later on someone else's trick.
• Run out of a suit. Passing all your cards of a short suit means you can throw away hearts or the queen whenever that suit is led.
• Duck. When you follow suit, play the highest card that still loses the trick. Save your low cards for later.
• Drive out the queen. If you don't hold the queen of spades, lead low spades until whoever has it is forced to play it.
• Watch for the moon. If one player has taken every point so far, win a trick with a heart in it to stop them shooting the moon.

About Hearts

Hearts grew out of older card games in which the aim was to avoid taking tricks, such as Reversis. The version played most today, with the queen of spades worth 13 points and three cards passed before each hand, is sometimes called Black Lady. The rules here are the common ones: passing left, right, across and then not at all, the 2 of clubs leading, no points on the first trick, hearts broken before they can be led, and 26 points for everyone else when a player shoots the moon. Some players count the jack of diamonds as minus 10 points, let the queen of spades break hearts, or take 26 points off the moon shooter's own score instead. Those aren't part of this version.

Questions

Updated 9 November 2026