HEARTS

Hearts Rules

Hearts is a "trick" taking and points avoidance game. Points are accumulated when either an heart or the Queen of Spades card is collected in a trick.

The game starts with each player being dealt round robin 13 cards each. There are a total of four players.

The first 3 initial deals start--after the cards are dealt--with each player passing 3 cards to the player on the Left, Right and then Across from them on those deals successively and holding their cards on the fourth deal. This process repeats until termination of game.

The player with the 2 of clubs leads the opening trick. The suit of the card that leads is the one each player must play. If they don't have the lead suit card they may play any card.

Hearts cannot lead a trick unless the player has no other card that matches the lead suit card. If an heart suit is played it will be termed as "Hearts being broken". Each heart card totals 1 point. The Queen of Spades totals 13 points.

After deal, each player submit one card to play for a total of four cards in the pile/table center. The player with the highest ranking card of lead suit will collect the trick.

The objective of the game is to minimize the points collected. The player that accumulates 100 points terminates the game with the winner being the one with the lowest points.

"Shooting the Moon" is a special case where a player collects all the penalty cards (13 hearts + Queen of Spades). In this case the player gets 0 points and the other 3 players collect 26 points each.

All this stated this is just one variation of the the Hearts game. The number of points to terminate the game can vary as well as the rounds played, but the rules here currently are 100 points to termination.