How to Play Hearts: Rules, Passing and Scoring Explained

Hearts is a trick-taking card game for four players, each playing alone, where the goal is to take as few points as possible. Every heart you take costs you 1 point and the queen of spades costs 13. Before each hand everyone passes three cards, the 2 of clubs leads the first trick, and you must follow suit if you can. The game ends when someone reaches 100 points, and the lowest score wins.

Below are the full rules exactly as Poozee's Hearts plays them, with every example checked with the game's own rules engine. Where popular house rules differ, we say so. For how to pass and play well, see our Hearts strategy guide.

Hearts at a glance

On Poozee, you sit at the bottom of the table (South), with West on your left, North across and East on your right. All three are computer players. Play goes around to the left: you, then West, North and East.

How a hand of Hearts works

1. Deal. All 52 cards are dealt, 13 to each player.
2. Pass. Everyone chooses three cards to pass to another player. The direction changes every hand, and every fourth hand there's no passing.
3. Play 13 tricks. Whoever holds the 2 of clubs leads it to start the first trick. Everyone else plays one card in turn, and whoever wins the trick leads the next one.
4. Score. Everyone counts the points in the tricks they took and adds them to their total.
5. Deal again, until someone has 100 or more at the end of a hand.

Passing

Everyone picks their three cards at the same time, so you choose yours before you see what you'll get. The direction follows a cycle of four hands:

The fourth hand is called a hold hand: everyone plays the cards they were dealt, and the 2 of clubs leads right away. Poozee shows the direction above the table, and cards passed to you are marked with a dot until you play your first card.

The pass is your chance to get rid of the queen of spades or high hearts, or to empty a short suit. Which cards to pass is a strategy question, and our strategy guide tests the common advice.

Playing a trick

• Follow suit if you can. Whatever suit is led, you must play a card of that suit if you have one.
• If you can't follow suit, play anything (except on the first trick: see below). This is your chance to throw a heart or the queen of spades onto someone else's trick.
• Who wins: the highest card of the suit that was led. Hearts has no trump, so a card of any other suit never wins, not even an ace.
• The winner takes all four cards, points included, and leads the next trick.

Here are four tricks, with each card in the order it was played:

The first trick

Whoever holds the 2 of clubs after the pass must lead it. On this trick only, nobody may play a point card: if you can't follow with a club, you must play a card worth no points, as long as you have one.

Say West leads the 2♣, North and East follow with clubs, and you have none. Your hand is A♠ Q♠ 7♠ 3♠ K♦ J♦ 8♦ 4♦ A♥ 10♥ 9♥ 6♥ 2♥. On any later trick you could throw away the queen of spades, but here you may play A♠, 7♠, 3♠, K♦, J♦, 8♦ or 4♦.

The only exception is a hand with no clubs that holds nothing but hearts and the queen of spades. Then you must play a heart, and still not the queen. That's so rare that it never came up once in the games we measured below.

Not being able to follow the 2 of clubs is more common than you might think, because passing empties short suits. In our games between Medium computer players, at least one player couldn't follow the 2 of clubs in 27% of hands: 33% of hands with a pass and 5% of hold hands.

Breaking hearts

You can't lead a heart until hearts are broken, which happens the first time someone plays a heart on a trick of another suit because they couldn't follow it. Only a heart breaks hearts: the queen of spades doesn't, so you may lead it, or throw it away, without changing what anyone can lead. And if you're on lead with nothing but hearts left, you may lead one anyway, which breaks hearts too.

The rule only covers leading. Once the first trick is over, you may throw a heart whenever you can't follow suit, and once a heart is led, everyone who has a heart must follow with one.

Here's what the rules allow in a few spots after the first trick:

On Poozee, a badge in the corner of the table shows whether hearts are broken. Cards you can't play are dimmed, and if you tap one anyway, the game tells you why.

In our Medium games, hearts were first broken on trick 4.5 on average: as early as the second trick in 9% of hands, and by the end of trick 5 in 76%. A player holding only hearts led a heart before hearts were broken in 0.6% of hands.

How scoring works in Hearts

At the end of each hand, everyone counts the points in the tricks they took: every heart is worth 1 point and the queen of spades is worth 13. No other card counts. There are 13 hearts, so that's 26 points in every hand, and each player's points are added to their total. Lower is better.

Shooting the moon

If one player takes all 13 hearts and the queen of spades, they shoot the moon: they score 0 for the hand, and every other player scores 26. Here are three hands, with points listed for you, West, North and East:

The last row is why trying for the moon is risky: if anyone else takes a single heart, the player going for it keeps every other point they took, here 25 of them.

On Poozee, shooting the moon always gives everyone else 26, even when that ends the game in someone else's favor. Here's what happens to the totals (you, West, North, East) when you shoot the moon from three different positions:

In the last row, the moon pushes North and East past 100 and ends the game, but West is still lower than you, so West wins.

In our 10,000 games between Medium computer players (108,921 hands), someone shot the moon in 3.3% of hands, about 1 hand in 30, and 32% of games had at least one.

Winning the game

Scores are checked at the end of each hand. As soon as anyone has 100 or more, the game ends, and the player with the lowest score wins.

For example, say you have 70, West 92, North 75 and East 88 going into a hand, and you take 5 points, West 9, North 12 and East none. West ends on 101, so the game is over, and you win with 75, even though East took no points that hand.

If two or more players tie for the lowest score, Poozee counts it as a shared win. In our Medium games, two or more players tied for the lowest score in 2.0% of games.

A game lasted 10.9 hands on average, and half of all games took between 10 and 12 hands. The winner finished with 47 points on average, and the highest score averaged 107.

What a Hearts deal looks like

Every deal splits the 13 hearts between four hands, so a hand holds 3 1/4 hearts on average, and you're dealt the queen of spades in one hand out of four on average. In 1,000,000 hands dealt by Poozee's shuffle, a player was dealt no hearts at all in 1.3% of hands, and 17.6% were dealt five or more. A player was dealt no clubs in 1.3% of hands, which is why most of the first-trick voids above come from passing.

Hearts terms

• Trick: one card from each player, won by the highest card of the suit led.
• Lead: play the first card of a trick.
• Follow suit: play a card of the suit that was led. You must when you can.
• Void: having no cards of a suit, which lets you throw away hearts and the queen of spades when that suit is led.
• Breaking hearts: the first heart played in a hand. After it, hearts can be led.
• Duck: play a card that loses the trick on purpose.
• Dump (or discard): throw away a point card or a dangerous high card when you can't follow suit.
• Hold hand: a hand with no passing, every fourth hand.
• Shoot the moon: take all 26 points in one hand.
• Renege: fail to follow suit when you could. Poozee won't let you.

House rules: how Poozee compares

Hearts has plenty of house rules. Here's what Poozee does, and what you might run into at other tables:

If you play with friends or family, settle these before the first deal, especially how shooting the moon is scored.

Practice on Poozee

Poozee's Hearts has three computer levels, from Easy (which makes frequent mistakes) to Hard, and none of them looks at your cards. Hint suggests three cards to pass, or a card to play, when you're stuck. Your game is saved in your browser, so you can close the tab and finish later.

If you already know how to play Spades, the big differences are that Hearts has no trump, no partners and no bidding, and that you're trying to avoid tricks with points in them instead of winning tricks. When the rules feel natural, the strategy guide shows which habits actually lower your score.

Keep playing

• Play Hearts against three computer players
• Hearts strategy, tested over 20,000 computer hands
• How to play Spades, a trick-taking game with partners and bidding
• Play Spades with a computer partner
• Play Euchre, a faster partnership game with a short deck