How to Play Hearts: Complete Rules and Scoring

These are the rules of hearts as it’s played in North America today: the game in Pagat’s rules, Bicycle’s rules and the Windows game, and the game on this site. Where tables play a rule differently, the rule says so, and the house rules page gives every alternative and who plays it.

Players and cards

Hearts is a game for four players, each playing for themselves. There are no partners. It uses a standard 52-card deck with no jokers, and the cards in each suit rank from ace (high) down to two (low). There is no trump suit: a card of another suit never beats the suit that was led.

The aim is to avoid points. Every heart you win in a trick counts against you, and so does the queen of spades. The player with the lowest score at the end wins.

Three, five or six people can play with a few cards taken out of the deck (three players, five and six), and there are games for two. The rules below are for four.

The deal

Shuffle and deal the whole deck one card at a time, face down, clockwise, so that each player has 13 cards. The deal moves one seat to the left after each hand. (The game on this site deals for you.)

Passing three cards

Before each hand is played, every player chooses three cards from their hand and passes them face down to another player. You look at your own cards first, choose, and put your three down. Only then do you pick up the three cards passed to you, so you can’t pass on what you were given.

The direction changes every hand, in a cycle of four:

Then the cycle starts again with a pass to the left. This is the order in Pagat’s rules, World of Card Games, Trickster, CardGames.io and Pogo’s old game; the Windows game also skipped every fourth pass. Some tables never hold, some always pass left, and some don’t pass at all; see passing on the house rules page.

Most players pass their most dangerous cards: high spades that might win the queen, high hearts, and cards that leave them with no cards in a suit. Which cards to pass is a matter of strategy, not rules: see what to pass.

Playing the tricks

The first lead. After the pass, the player holding the two of clubs must lead it to the first trick.

Following suit. Play goes clockwise. Each player plays one card, and you must follow the suit that was led if you have a card of that suit. If you don’t, you may play any card you like. Playing a heart or the queen of spades on a trick you can’t follow is how you give points to someone else.

Winning the trick. The highest card of the suit that was led wins the trick. Cards of other suits can’t win it, however high they are. The winner takes the four cards, puts them face down in front of them, and leads any card they’re allowed to the next trick.

A hand has 13 tricks. At the end of it, each player counts the points in the tricks they took.

The first trick

Nobody may play a heart or the queen of spades to the first trick, even a player who has no clubs. A player with no clubs has to play a card of another suit instead.

The one exception is a player with no clubs whose hand holds nothing but points (hearts and perhaps the queen of spades). In the game on this site that player plays a heart; the queen of spades is never allowed on the first trick.

This is the rule in Bicycle’s rules, the Windows game, World of Card Games, CardGames.io, Trickster, Whisthub and Pogo’s old game. Pagat’s main rules have no such restriction and list it as a common variant, so some tables do allow points on the first trick. The game here has a switch for it.

Breaking hearts

You can’t lead a heart until hearts have been “broken”, which happens the first time a heart is played to a trick. Usually that’s a player who can’t follow suit and throws a heart on another suit’s trick.

There’s one exception: a player on lead whose hand holds nothing but hearts may lead one, and that breaks hearts. In the game on this site, a player holding only hearts and the queen of spades may also lead a heart.

Once hearts are broken, anyone may lead a heart for the rest of the hand. The rule was not always part of the game: older rule books let you lead hearts at any time. Pagat notes that nearly everyone in the USA now plays with it.

The queen of spades

The queen of spades, often called the Black Lady (in some books Black Maria), is worth 13 points, as much as all the hearts together. Avoiding her, or giving her to someone else, is most of the game.

• She may be led at any time, before or after hearts are broken, from the second trick on.
• She does not break hearts in the game on this site: only a heart does. This is Pagat’s main rule and the Windows game’s. Bicycle, Trickster, World of Card Games and Pogo’s old game count the queen as breaking hearts as well, and players argue about it (more on the house rules page).
• You don’t have to play her at the first chance. Some old rule books required a player to discard the queen as soon as they safely could; Bicycle’s current rules say you don’t have to, and no online game requires it.

Scoring

At the end of each hand, every player counts the points in the tricks they took:

Add each player’s points to their running total. Points are bad: the lowest total wins.

A worked hand. Ann, Ben, Cal and Dee have played the 13 tricks. Ann took four hearts. Ben took the queen of spades and three hearts. Cal took six hearts. Dee took no points at all.

The points for the hand add up to 4 + 16 + 6 + 0 = 26. Every hand’s points add up to 26 unless someone shoots the moon, so if your table’s numbers don’t, someone has miscounted.

Shooting the moon. If one player takes all 13 hearts and the queen of spades in a hand, they have shot the moon. Instead of scoring 26, they score nothing, and either every other player scores 26 or the shooter takes 26 off their own score. In the game on this site the shooter chooses. Tables score the moon in four different ways; shooting the moon gives all four, with the same hand scored each way.

A score sheet with columns for each player and a moon column is on the score sheet page.

Winning

The game ends at the end of the hand in which any player reaches or passes 100 points. The player with the lowest total wins.

If two or more players are tied for the lowest score when the game ends, the game on this site plays more hands until one of them is lowest on their own, as in Pagat’s variations, John Hay’s rules, CardGames.io and Pogo’s old game. World of Card Games and Trickster let tied players share the win instead.

Some tables play a shorter game to 50 or 75, and some reset a score that lands exactly on 100. Both are switches in the game, explained on the house rules page.

Where tables play differently

Hearts has no official rule book, and the sources disagree on more points than they agree on. The most common arguments:

• Does the queen of spades break hearts? Here, no; in about half the sources, yes.
• How is the moon scored? Here, the shooter chooses; the Windows game always added 26 to the others.
• Points on the first trick? Here, none; in Pagat’s main rules, allowed.
• A tie at the end? Here, play on; on some sites, a shared win.
• The jack of diamonds takes 10 points off whoever wins it, in the version called Omnibus Hearts.

Each one, with who plays which way, is on the house rules page. The game’s house-rules button sets any of them for your table, and a friends link carries them.

Hearts terms