Hearts — free online card game against the computer

Hearts is a game about losing tricks. Thirteen cards each, four players, and the aim is to take as few penalty cards as possible: every heart costs one point and the queen of spades costs thirteen. You must follow the suit that was led if you can, and whoever plays the highest card of that suit is stuck with the trick — and everything painful in it.

This version runs four hands, which is exactly one full rotation of the passing rule: you pass three cards left, then right, then across, then keep your hand. Your score is your total after those four hands, so lower is better and every game is the same length and directly comparable. Take all twenty-six points in a single hand and you have shot the moon — you score nothing and everyone else takes twenty-six. Free, no download, and a game in progress is saved if you close the tab.

How to play

• Pass three cards at the start of each hand — left, right, across, then no pass.
• The two of clubs always leads the first trick. Follow the suit led if you can.
• Hearts cannot be led until a heart or the queen has been played on some earlier trick.
• No penalty cards on the first trick of a hand.
• Hearts are 1 each, the queen of spades is 13. Take all 26 and you shoot the moon: you get 0, everyone else gets 26.

Why the queen decides everything, and how to be rid of her

Thirteen of the twenty-six points on the table sit on a single card, which distorts the whole game. All thirteen hearts together are worth exactly as much as one queen of spades, so almost every decision in Hearts is really a decision about spades. If you are dealt the queen, or the king or ace above her, you are holding a liability: the ace and king cannot duck under the queen if someone leads spades, which means the queen lands on you.

That gives you two plans and you should pick one early. Either pass the danger away — the queen, and any king or ace of spades you cannot protect — or, if you are keeping them, hold enough low spades to survive the spade leads that will come. Three or four small spades behind a high one is protection; a bare king is a disaster waiting for its turn.

The other half of the game is voiding. The moment you hold no cards in a suit, every time that suit is led you may throw anything you like — which is when the queen leaves your hand, or a heart does. Short suits are therefore assets, not weaknesses, and passing away your last two diamonds is often stronger than passing away two high hearts. The corollary is defensive: when an opponent stops following a suit, they have just become dangerous, and leading that suit again is how people get the queen dropped on them.

Finally, watch for the moon. If one player is taking heart after heart and nobody has seen the queen, someone must take a point to break it up — including you, even though it costs you. Losing four points to stop a twenty-six-point swing is the clearest good deal in the game. If you like trick-taking of this kind, Mancala and Checkers reward the same forward counting.

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