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Hearts.png

Hearts

Avoid the Queen, dodge the hearts, and stick your friends with the pain.

Hearts is a four-player trick-avoiding game where the goal is simple—score the fewest points. Avoid hearts (1 point each) and especially the Queen of Spades (13 points). Pass cards, play tricks, and follow suit when you can. First to 100 loses, but if you “shoot the moon” and grab all the bad cards, everyone else eats 26 points instead.

How to Play Like a Pro

Finally Beat Your Sister Without Mom Getting Involved

  • Setup:

    • Use a standard 52-card deck.

    • Four players, no teams.

    • Each player gets 13 cards.

    • Before the first round, everyone passes 3 cards to another player (left, right, across, or keep—rotates each round).

  • Gameplay:

    • The player with the 2 of Clubs goes first.

    • You must follow the suit that’s led if you can.

    • If you can’t follow suit, you may play any card—except you can’t play a heart or the Queen of Spades until hearts have been “broken” (played in a previous trick).

    • The highest card of the lead suit wins the trick.

  • Scoring:

    • Every heart is worth 1 point.

    • The Queen of Spades is worth 13 points.

    • First player to reach 100 points ends the game.

    • The winner is the one with the lowest score.

    • If a player collects all the hearts and the Queen of Spades, they “shoot the moon” — everyone else gets 26 points and they get zero!

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