The classic trick-avoidance game, for three to six players
Hearts is a trick-taking game with the goal turned upside down: you are trying not to win tricks. Every heart you capture costs you a penalty point and the Queen of Spades costs thirteen, so half the danger in the pack sits on a single card. The player with the lowest score when someone crosses the target wins. It is public domain, several centuries old in its ancestry, and the version everyone means by “Hearts” today — with the Queen and the three-card pass — settled into shape in America around the 1920s.
Score as few points as possible. Unlike almost every other card game, points here are a punishment. A match ends at the end of the hand in which any player reaches or passes the target — 100 points by default — and the player with the lowest total is the winner. A tie for lowest is a shared win.
Hearts uses one standard 52-card pack, aces high, and there is no trump suit. Cards are only ever removed so that the pack divides evenly between the players:
| Players | Removed | Each hand | Leads |
|---|---|---|---|
| 3 | 2♣ | 17 | 3♣ |
| 4 | — | 13 | 2♣ |
| 5 | 2♣ 2♦ | 10 | 3♣ |
| 6 | 2♣ 3♣ 2♦ 2♠ | 8 | 4♣ |
The rule behind the table is one sentence: the holder of the lowest club in the pack must lead it to the first trick. Four players is the classic game; everything else is an even deal of the same rules.
Before each hand every player chooses three cards and passes them face down, and only then picks up the three coming the other way. Nobody sees what they have been given before committing their own, so the pass is a genuine blind decision.
The direction rotates: left, right, across, then a hold hand with no pass at all, and repeat. Three and five players have no seat directly opposite, so their cycle is simply left, right, hold.
The lowest club leads the first trick. After that, whoever won the last trick leads the next one.
Only two rules limit what you may play, and both exist to stop the first few tricks being a bloodbath.
Note what is not restricted: after the first trick the Queen of Spades may be led, discarded or played to follow suit entirely freely. She is never protected.
Twenty-six points go on the table every single hand:
That split is the whole shape of the game. One card carries half the danger, so most of the tension in a hand is about where the Queen is and who is going to be forced to take her.
If a single player captures every heart and the Queen of Spades — all 26 points — the score inverts: instead of taking 26, they score −26. This is called shooting the moon, and it is why you cannot simply duck every trick all hand. If someone is collecting hearts unopposed, taking one yourself, deliberately, for a single point, kills the attempt outright.
An optional rule reverses which side of the table the swing lands on: the moon adds 26 to everyone else instead of taking 26 off the shooter.
Every one of these is a switch on the start screen, and every one of them starts off — the game boots as the standard rules above.
Hearts rewards thinking about the Queen before she is anywhere near the table.
Four is the classic game and the one all the standard rules assume. This version also deals three, five and six players by removing a few low cards so the pack divides evenly: the 2 of clubs at three players, the 2 of clubs and 2 of diamonds at five, and the 2 and 3 of clubs plus the 2 of diamonds and 2 of spades at six. In every case the holder of the lowest club still leads the first trick.
Each heart is one penalty point and the Queen of Spades is thirteen, so twenty-six points are dealt out every hand. Everything else scores nothing. The match ends at the end of the hand in which someone reaches the target score, which is 100 by default, and the player with the LOWEST total wins.
Shooting the moon means capturing every single penalty card in one hand: all thirteen hearts and the Queen of Spades. Instead of scoring 26 points, the player scores minus 26. It is the reason you cannot safely duck every trick — if one player is quietly taking all the hearts, someone has to take one to break the attempt.
No. No penalty card — no heart and not the Queen — may be played to the first trick, unless a player holds nothing but penalty cards, in which case they have no legal alternative. After the first trick the Queen has no protection at all and may be led, discarded or played freely.
You may not lead a heart until a heart has already been discarded to an earlier trick. Discarding that first heart is called breaking hearts, and from then on hearts may be led like any other suit. The one exception is a player whose entire hand is hearts, who may lead one regardless.
Yes — it runs in your browser with no sign-up, no download and no payment, against computer opponents, and you can also play online with friends by sharing a room code.
It is an optional variant, usually called Omnibus Hearts. The Jack of Diamonds is worth minus ten points to whoever captures it, which turns one trick each hand into something genuinely worth winning. It is switched off by default here.