how to play hearts

February 24, 2026

Hearts is a trick‑taking card game where 3–6 players try to avoid winning tricks that contain hearts or the queen of spades, because those give you penalty points and the lowest score wins.

What Hearts Is

Hearts is an evasion trick‑taking game: instead of trying to take tricks, you mostly try to dodge them when they contain penalty cards.

Standard play uses 4 players and a 52‑card deck, no jokers.

Setup and Deal

Use a standard 52‑card deck and shuffle thoroughly; in a 4‑player game, deal 13 cards to each player, one at a time, face down.

With 3 players, you typically remove the 2 of diamonds so each gets 17 cards; with 5 players, you usually remove the 2 of diamonds and 2 of clubs so everyone gets 10.

Passing Cards

Before each hand starts, players choose 3 cards from their hand and pass them face down to another player.

The pass direction cycles: first hand to the left, second to the right, third across, fourth no pass, then repeat that four‑hand cycle.

Playing Tricks

The player holding the 2 of clubs leads the first trick by playing that card; play continues clockwise, with each player adding one card.

You must follow suit if you can; if you cannot, you may play any other suit (with some restrictions on the first trick).

Special “Hearts” Rules

On the very first trick, no hearts or the queen of spades may be played, unless a player has nothing but penalty cards, which is rare.

Hearts cannot be led until “hearts are broken,” meaning someone has discarded (sloughed) a heart on a trick where another suit was led.

Taking Tricks and Scoring

The highest card of the suit that was led wins the trick; there is no trump suit in Hearts.

After all cards are played, each player counts penalties: every heart is worth 1 point and the queen of spades is worth 13 points, for a total of 26 possible points each hand.

Shooting the Moon

If one player takes all 13 hearts plus the queen of spades in a single hand, they “shoot the moon.”

The usual rule is that the shooter scores 0 for that hand and every opponent adds 26 points to their total, which can flip the game dramatically.

Winning the Game

The table agrees on a target score, commonly 100 points, sometimes 50 for shorter games.

Hands continue until at least one player reaches or exceeds that score; the player with the lowest score at that moment wins.

Simple Beginner Strategy

Try to avoid taking the queen of spades and too many hearts by getting rid of high cards in suits where you are short.

Keep track of which high cards are gone and who is likely to be void in a suit, as this helps you predict dangerous tricks and dodge penalty points.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.