Hearts Strategy: How to Win at Hearts

The rules of hearts take five minutes to learn. Playing it well takes longer. This page covers the decisions that matter most, in the order they come up in a hand. It assumes you know the rules.

Is hearts skill or luck?

Both. The cards you’re dealt decide a lot about one hand, and a bad pass from your neighbour can cost you the queen. But over a game, and over many games, the better player wins far more often than chance.

We measured it with the computer players in this site’s game, using a simulator that plays whole games with the real rules and rotates the players round the seats:

• One expert computer player at a table with three standard ones won 53% of 200 games. Four equal players would each win 25%. The standard players won about 16% each.
• The standard player, at a table with three of the old, simpler computer players, won 65% of its games.

The difference between those players is everything on this page: what they pass, when they keep the queen, how they count cards and how they defend against a moon.

The pass

The pass is the first decision of every hand, and often the most important. Three questions to ask:

1. Can I keep the queen of spades?

• If you hold the queen with several low spades, you can usually keep her. When spades are led you play low, and later you can throw her onto a trick in a suit you no longer hold.
• If you hold the queen with one or two other spades, she’s in danger: someone leading spades can force her out. Pass her.

2. Can the high spades catch the queen?

• If you don’t hold the queen, the ace and king of spades are the most dangerous cards in your hand: play either one to a spade trick and the queen may land on it. With few low spades to protect them, pass them.
• With plenty of low spades, the ace and king are safer, because you can play low until the queen has gone.

3. Can I empty a suit?

• If you hold only two or three cards of a suit (other than hearts), passing all of them makes you void: from the first time that suit is led, you can throw away points. A void in clubs or diamonds is the most useful thing a pass can give you.

What to keep: low cards. A hand of twos, threes and fours can duck almost any trick. High hearts are risky late in the hand, but low hearts are useful.

Remember what you passed. You know three cards in one player’s hand. If you passed the queen to your left, watch for her when that player can’t follow suit.

The hold hand (every fourth hand, with no pass) means playing the cards you were dealt. Plan the hand from the start, and look for a moon if your cards are strong.

The queen of spades

The queen is 13 of the 26 points in every hand, so tracking her is half the game.

• If you hold her, don’t lead spades and keep enough low spades to follow safely. Throw her away the first time you can’t follow suit, ideally onto a trick won by the player you’d most like to see take 13 points.
• If you don’t hold her and your spades are low, lead spades. Every spade trick forces the other players to follow, and sooner or later the queen has to come out on someone else’s high spade. Pagat calls this smoking out the queen.
• If you hold the ace or king of spades without the queen, avoid spade tricks. Throw the high spade away when you can’t follow another suit.
• Count spades. Thirteen spades in all: once the queen has gone, the ace and king are just cards.

Voids and discards

Being void (out of a suit) is how you get rid of points: when that suit is led, you can play a heart or the queen on someone else’s trick. Pagat calls that painting the trick.

• Get void early, through the pass or by playing your short suit first.
• When you discard, think about what will hurt you later: the queen, the ace and king of spades, high hearts, and high cards in a suit where you have nothing low.
• Watch who else is void. A player who didn’t follow suit is out of it, and will throw points on every trick in that suit.

What to lead

• Early, lead from your long suits with low cards. Most players can still follow, so tricks are cheap.
• Clubs and diamonds are safer early than later: nobody may throw points on the first trick, and few players are void yet.
• Lead a suit where someone else must win, such as a low card in a suit where you know the high cards are out against you.
• Once hearts are broken, low hearts are good leads: someone else has to win the trick, and it costs them.
• Avoid leading a suit in which you hold one high card alone; you may end up winning the trick it falls in later.

Counting cards

You don’t need to remember every card. Keep track of:

1. The queen of spades, and whether the ace and king of spades have been played.
2. How many hearts are out. If eight hearts have been played, five are left.
3. Who is void in what. Anyone who didn’t follow suit.
4. The suit you’re leading. Thirteen cards in each suit: count what has fallen.

Late in the hand, this tells you which of your cards are safe and which will win a trick.

Stopping a moon

A moon costs everyone else 26 points, so stopping one is worth taking a heart or two yourself.

• Watch the points. If one player has won every heart so far, and the queen too, a moon may be coming.
• Take a heart from them. A single heart in anyone else’s tricks ends it. Win a heart trick early, even at a small cost.
• Keep one high heart when a moon is possible: late in the hand it can win a heart trick the shooter needs.
• Don’t keep throwing points onto the tricks of a player who has taken all of them so far.

It matters: in our simulation a player who tries for a moon whenever it looks possible made about 70% of its attempts against the old computer players, which never defended, and only about 20% against the standard ones, which do. More on shooting the moon, including when to try one yourself. Successful moons are rare in good play: a table of standard computer players makes one in about one hand in 200.

Playing the score

Near the end of the game, watch who is close to the target (100, or 75 or 50 at a shorter game):

• If you have the lowest score, you want the game to end. Points that push another player over the target win you the game. If you shoot the moon while you’re lowest, adding 26 to the others may end the game in your favour; if you’re not lowest, adding can hand the game to someone else, so subtract (worked examples).
• If you’re not the lowest, you need the game to continue: steer points to the player with the lowest score, and away from anyone close to the target.
• Ties for the lowest score play on in this site’s game, so a tie is never a win until it’s broken.

Practise

The game on this site deals at once against three computer players who wait for you. The ⚙ House rules button sets the computer players to easy, standard or expert, so you can start gently and work up.