How to play Hearts: rules, scoring and strategy

Hearts is the card game where you try not to win the wrong tricks. It’s easy to learn, quick to play, and full of small decisions: which cards to pass, when to duck, and when to go for it all and shoot the moon.

What you need

• 4 players and a standard 52-card deck, with no jokers.
• Aces are high: from high to low, the cards rank A, K, Q, J, 10 … 2.
• Every player gets 13 cards.

The goal

Avoid points. At the end of each round you score:

The game ends when someone reaches 100 points. The player with the lowest score wins.

Passing cards

Before each round, every player passes three cards face down to another player. The direction rotates:

1. To the left
2. To the right
3. Across the table
4. No passing (keep your hand)

Then the cycle repeats.

Playing the tricks

• The player with the 2 of clubs leads it to start the first trick.
• Going clockwise, everyone plays one card. You must follow suit (play the same suit that was led) if you can.
• If you can’t follow suit, you can play any card, which is how points get dumped on other players.
• The highest card of the suit led wins the trick. The winner takes the cards and leads the next trick.
• No points on the first trick: you can’t play a heart or the Queen of Spades on the very first trick, unless you have nothing else.

Breaking hearts

You can’t lead a heart until hearts have been broken, meaning a heart has already been played on an earlier trick because someone couldn’t follow suit. If your hand is all hearts, you may lead one anyway.

Shooting the moon

If you win all 13 hearts and the Queen of Spades in a single round, you shoot the moon: you score 0 and every other player takes 26 points. It’s risky, but it can flip a whole game.

Hearts strategy

1. Pass the danger. Good cards to pass are the Queen, King and Ace of spades (unless you hold lots of low spades to protect them), and high hearts.
2. Go void in a suit. Passing away all your cards of one suit (say, all your diamonds) means you can dump points the first time diamonds are led.
3. Keep low cards. Low cards let you duck under the trick’s winner. A hand full of 2s, 3s and 4s is a safe hand.
4. Track the Queen of Spades. Until it appears, leading low spades can force it out of someone else’s hand.
5. Watch for a moon shot. If one player is winning every trick with hearts in it, take a single heart yourself to stop them.
6. Count the cards. Knowing which high cards are gone tells you when your 10 is suddenly the highest card left.

Play Hearts online

Kepo Hearts is classic Hearts against three friends from the Kepo family, free in your browser with no ads. It follows the rules above, including passing left, right, across and none, and shooting the moon. A hint button suggests a card when you’re unsure.