Hearts, a fun card game

Hearts is a game where you have to lose, or rather accumulate the fewest points, and that makes it a game full of fun. Usually in card games the instinct is to accumulate points, but in this game it’s the other way around, and that’s what makes it intriguing and fun and enjoyed by so many players.

HEARTS

The basic rules

Hearts is a game where you must avoid winning hands. The goal of players is to avoid winning certain penalty cards in a hand. It is a game usually played by 4 players and is part of the whist family of games.

Score:

– Queen of Spades: 13 points

– All hearts: 1 point

– All other cards: 0 points

History

The game is said to have originated in Spain around 1750 from a game called Reversis. But more modern versions were played in America in the late 19th, early 20th century as Black Lady and at the beginning of World War II in Britain as Black Maria.

How to play Hearts

The game requires a deck of 52 cards (Joker is excluded). These are dealt equally to the four players (13 cards each).

Before the game begins, each player must choose three cards from his hand and pass them to the player to his right. At the same time, he will receive three from the player on his left.

At this point, the first hand can begin. The player with the ‘Two of Clubs’ starts the game. The goal is to close the hand with the lowest possible score.

The player to the dealer’s left opens the game. Players must follow suit, dealing the same suit if they can; otherwise they can discard any card. The hand is won by the highest card of the suit in play, and the winner opens the next round.

For scoring and determining the winner, it is taken into account that each “captured” cup has one penalty point, 13 penalty points in total. The winner is the player with the lowest score after an agreed number of hands.

A special thing about this game is that on a hand one player can take all the scoring cards in play. It’s called a Grand Slam. It happens rarely, but it’s good to be aware of this winning possibility because it can affect your game strategy from the very beginning after you analyze the cards you have in your hand at the start of the game and have to discard three cards at the start of the action.

This is slightly strange, but it gives the game a special charm because the essence of Hearts is to get as few points as possible and win as few hands as possible during the game. And in the aforementioned hypothetical you basically do the opposite, you try to take them all.

Now the game is even more popular since the explosion of the internet and online gaming. For a friendly or family game it’s perfect and can bring a lot of good cheer.