Hearts Rules

Hearts is a trick-taking game for four players where the goal is inverted from most games in the family: you're not trying to win tricks, you're trying to avoid winning the wrong cards inside them. Every heart is worth a point against you, the queen of spades is worth thirteen on her own, and the entire game is a running effort to steer those specific cards into someone else's pile instead of your own.

The deal and the three-card pass

A standard 52-card deck is dealt out completely, thirteen cards to each of the four players. Before play starts, each player selects three cards from their hand and passes them, face-down, to a neighbor — the direction rotates hand to hand: left on the first hand, right on the second, across the table on the third, and no pass at all on the fourth, then the four-hand cycle repeats. This single mechanic is what keeps Hearts from becoming a game of pure luck-of-the-deal; a hand loaded with hearts can be partly unloaded before play even begins, and reading what your neighbor chose to pass you is itself useful information about what they're trying to avoid.

Leading the two of clubs, and the rule about hearts

Whoever holds the two of clubs after the pass leads it to start the very first trick of the hand — this is a fixed rule, not a choice, and it exists so that no player can open the game by leading a heart or the queen of spades on turn one. Players must follow the suit led if they have a card of it; if they don't, they may play anything, including a heart or the queen of spades. Hearts themselves cannot be led — used to start a new trick — until a heart has already been played on some earlier trick because a player had no cards of the suit that was led that turn. That moment is called "breaking hearts," and until it happens, a player leading a trick who does hold hearts in hand must lead something else if any non-heart card is available to them.

Taking tricks: what you're trying to avoid

The highest card of the suit led wins each trick, and whoever wins a trick leads the next one. At the end of the hand, every heart taken in any trick is worth 1 penalty point, and the queen of spades is worth 13 penalty points on her own — meaning a single unlucky trick can be worth as much as an entire hand's worth of hearts. Because tricks are usually won by playing a high card, a common beginner mistake is holding onto high spades too long — the queen of spades has to land somewhere, and a player sitting on the ace and king of spades with no low spades left is likely to be forced into taking her eventually.

Shooting the moon

There's one deliberate exception to "avoid taking points": if a single player manages to take every heart and the queen of spades in one hand — all 26 penalty points — that player can instead have every other player's score go up by 26 points while their own hand scores zero. "Shooting the moon" flips the entire hand's outcome, and it's a real, high-risk strategic option rather than a rare accident — a player who's already collected several hearts partway through a hand sometimes commits to taking everything rather than trying to unload the rest, precisely because a failed moon shot (taking most, but not all, of the point cards) is the worst possible outcome, scoring against you at full value with none of the payoff.

Scoring a hand and playing to 100

After all thirteen tricks are played, each player's penalty points for the hand — one per heart taken, thirteen for the queen of spades if taken, or the shoot-the-moon reversal if it happened — get added to their running total. The game continues, hand after hand with the pass direction cycling, until at least one player's total reaches 100 points. At that point the game ends, and the player with the lowest total wins — Hearts is scored the opposite way from most trick-based games, where you're racing to stay as far from a bad number as possible rather than racing toward a good one.

The pass that skips itself every fourth hand

The "hold" hand — the fourth hand in the pass cycle, where no cards change hands at all — changes the texture of that particular hand noticeably: whatever you were dealt is exactly what you're playing, with no chance to offload a dangerous card or fish for a better hand through the pass. Some casual tables skip the hold hand entirely and pass in a fixed three-direction rotation instead, which is a legitimate house variant as long as it's agreed before the first deal — it changes the game's rhythm slightly but nothing about how a given hand is scored once it's underway.

Basic strategy: what to keep, what to pass away

Beyond simply passing away the queen of spades and your highest hearts, experienced players think about voids — getting completely out of a suit early so that later in the hand they can discard a dangerous card instead of being forced to follow suit into it. Passing three cards from the same suit, rather than three scattered singles, is often stronger than it looks, since it can create an immediate void that lets you dump the queen of spades onto that suit the moment someone else leads it. Holding very low cards in every suit is valuable defensively, since a hand with a two or three in each suit can usually follow suit safely on early tricks without being forced to win them. Conversely, holding the ace or king of spades without also holding several low spades is genuinely dangerous — you're likely to be the one forced to take the queen when she finally appears, since someone eventually has to.

Variants: Omnibus Hearts and Spot Hearts

Two well-known variants add extra scoring cards on top of the standard hearts-and-queen structure. Omnibus Hearts adds the jack of diamonds as a bonus card worth negative 10 points to whoever takes it — a rare case in the game where taking a specific card actively helps your score — which changes the shoot-the-moon calculation too, since a full moon shot in Omnibus Hearts usually has to include the jack of diamonds to count. Spot Hearts scores each heart at its own pip value instead of a flat 1 point apiece, so the ace of hearts is worth 14 penalty points and the two of hearts is worth only 2, which shifts a lot of the game's tension toward avoiding the high hearts specifically rather than treating every heart as equally dangerous. Neither variant changes the two of clubs lead or the hearts-breaking rule — both layer new scoring onto the same basic play.

Origins: from Reverse whist to the American Hearts we know

Hearts descends from a family of 19th-century "reverse" trick-taking games — games where the usual goal of trick-taking (win tricks, score points) is deliberately inverted, sometimes called "Reverse Whist" or "Devil's Own." Early versions scored penalty points for hearts alone, without the queen of spades carrying any special weight; the queen's 13-point penalty and the shoot-the-moon mechanic were later American additions that turned a fairly simple avoidance game into the sharper, more strategic version played today. The three-card pass before play is also a later refinement — earlier variants dealt straight into play with no passing phase at all, which made the hand far more dependent on the initial deal.

The arguments this game actually produces

A genuinely counterintuitive rule trips up new players constantly: a player who is void in the led suit but still holding hearts before hearts have broken CAN legally "sluff" a low heart, since the no-hearts-led rule only restricts leading a trick, never restricts what a player who's void in the led suit chooses to discard. The second is whether the queen of spades can be legally played on the very first trick if a player has no clubs at all — yes, since only the two of clubs lead is restricted on the opening trick, not what a void player discards onto it. Further disputed calls are settled on the full dispute breakdown page, worked hand totals including moon shots are on the scoring deep-dive page, plus a printable scoresheet for tracking a full game to 100.

Questions that come up mid-hand

What happens on the very last trick if a player is holding only hearts left in hand? They simply play one, following the normal suit rules if they can, and it scores against them like any other heart taken — there's no special exemption for point cards taken on the final trick.

Can a player pass the queen of spades or a dangerous heart to a neighbor during the pass phase? Yes, absolutely — passing away exactly the cards you don't want is the entire point of the pass, and the queen of spades in particular is one of the most commonly passed single cards in the game.

Does the two of clubs holder have to lead it, or can they lead any club instead? They must lead the two of clubs specifically, not just any club — it's the one card in the entire hand whose play on the opening trick is fixed rather than chosen.