What Cards to Pass in Hearts: 13 Passing Rules Tested

The best cards to pass in Hearts are the queen of spades, then the ace and king of spades if you have fewer than three lower spades, then your highest clubs and diamonds. Keep your hearts, even the high ones. In our computer tests, that checklist cut a player's points by 0.80 per hand compared with the standard computer pass, and lifted their share of games won from 25.8% to 33.8%.

The biggest surprise was hearts: the popular tip to pass your high hearts was one of the worst rules we tried. Below is how we tested 13 passing rules in all three passing directions, the full checklist, and two real deals. For the rules of passing itself, see how to play Hearts.

How we tested

Everything here comes from the computer players in Poozee's Hearts, with the game's own rules engine. We dealt 50,000 hands and played each one four times: passing left, right and across, and once as a hold hand with no passing. Using the same cards in every direction means the luck of the deal is identical when we compare directions.

South changed only the three cards it passed. West, North and East passed and played like the game's Medium computer, and South played its cards like Medium too. Medium passes, in order, the queen of spades when it has fewer than three lower spades, an unguarded ace or king of spades, any heart from the 10 up, and then its highest remaining cards, favoring clubs and diamonds from a suit of one or two cards. "Spade trouble" below means the spades Medium would pass.

We measured South's points per hand, where lower is better. Every rule plays the same deals, so the luck of the cards cancels out of the comparisons: in any one direction, each rule's difference from Medium's pass has a 95% margin of error under 0.1 points.

13 passing rules, tested

South's average points per hand with each passing rule, by direction, and the average change compared with Medium's pass:

"Third" means that card replaces Medium's third choice. "Empty a short suit" means passing your shortest club or diamond suit of three cards or fewer, highest first.

The same deals played as hold hands, with nobody passing, cost South 6.91 points per hand, about the same as Medium's pass. Passing doesn't lower your score by itself, since everyone passes. It helps only when you pass better than the table does.

Points per hand add up over a game. We played 10,000 whole games to 100 for each rule, against three Medium players. A tie for the lowest score counts as a win for everyone tied, so four equal players each win a little over 25%:

Each win rate has a 95% margin of error of under 1 percentage point.

The checklist

Pick your three cards in this order, and stop when you have three:

1. The queen of spades, if you have it.
2. The ace and king of spades, if you have fewer than three spades below the queen.
3. Cards from a club or diamond suit of only one or two cards, highest first. Emptying the suit lets you throw away hearts and the queen when it's led.
4. Your highest clubs and diamonds. If you run out, your highest spades.

Pass a heart only when you have nothing else left. The checklist picked a different pass from Medium's in 85% of hands. Step 3 helps a little: in the same deals, skipping step 3 cost 0.05, 0.10 and 0.10 points per hand (left, right, across).

Keep your hearts, even the ace

Medium passes at least one heart in 79% of hands, the way many players do. Taking the hearts out of its pass, and passing high clubs and diamonds instead, saved 0.70 points per hand, and passing your highest hearts on purpose cost 1.58. The ace of hearts is no exception: added to the checklist, passing it right after the spades cost 0.44 points on each of the 12,322 hands where it changed the pass.

Part of the reason shows up in the queen. With Medium's pass, you took the queen of spades in 25%, 25%, 25% of hands (left, right, across); with the checklist, 20%, 22%, 21%, and with Medium's pass but no hearts, 21%, 22%, 22%. High clubs and diamonds win tricks, and whoever wins a trick is who the others throw the queen and their hearts onto. A high heart, on the other hand, can be thrown away as soon as you run out of a suit.

Low hearts are worth keeping too. Giving away your lowest heart as the third card cost 1.88 points per hand, more than any rule except random and low passes. A low heart lets you play under someone else's heart and stay out of the trick, and once hearts are broken it's a good card to lead, as our guide to what to lead in Hearts measures.

Pro tip: If you're thinking about shooting the moon, the opposite applies: keep your high cards and pass low. Our shooting the moon guide has the hands worth trying it with.

Should you pass the queen of spades?

Yes, almost always. Here's the change in your points per hand from passing the queen instead of keeping it, by how many lower spades you were dealt with it and which way you passed. Negative means passing was better:

Keeping a queen with no lower spades, you ended up taking it in 92% to 94% of hands. With three lower spades, keeping it meant taking it 20% to 22% of the time, and passing still saved points in every direction. With four or more, passing came out a little ahead in five of the six cells, but by less than 0.6 points, close to the noise for these smaller groups.

With two or fewer lower spades, passing right saves the most. The player on your right plays just before you on every trick you don't lead, so when they drop the queen, you can often still play under it. The player on your left plays just after you, and can drop it onto a trick you're already winning.

Send the ace and king with the queen

If you pass a queen that had no lower spades, you still took it back in 54% of hands passing left, 26% passing right and 49% passing across. One reason is an ace or king of spades left behind with nothing to protect it: the player you gave the queen to can drop it on them.

On the 3,127 deals with the queen, the ace or king, and fewer than three lower spades, Medium kept every high spade it held in 95% of them, and you got the queen back 56% of the time passing left. Sending the ace and king along with the queen cut that to 35%, and saved 3.16 points per hand passing left, 1.27 across and 0.19 passing right, which is within the noise. That's step 2 of the checklist.

Without the queen, the ace and king follow the same three-spade line. The change in your points from passing them, by lower spades and passing direction (negative means passing was better):

With two or fewer lower spades, pass them. With three or more, the differences are small, and passing them right cost points every time, so keep them.

Does the passing direction matter?

For the most part, no. The same checklist was the best rule in every direction we tested, and the hearts rules (keeping hearts, passing high hearts, passing a low heart) and keeping an unguarded ace or king moved by less than 0.15 points from one direction to another.

A few rules did depend on the direction. The change from Medium's pass, left, right and across:

• Keeping the queen cost the most passing right (+0.42, +0.71, +0.60).
• Passing the 2♣ was harmless passing left but cost points the other two ways (+0.01, +0.32, +0.19).
• Passing your three highest cards was slightly better than Medium's pass to the left and worse to the right and across (-0.11, +0.14, +0.10).

So the direction changes how much some choices matter, not which rule wins.

Two real deals

Keeping hearts. Here's deal 20 of our test set: 6♣ K♣ 9♦ A♦ 5♠ 7♠ 8♠ 9♠ J♠ 2♥ 10♥ J♥ A♥. With five spades below the queen and no queen, king or ace of spades, there's no spade trouble. Medium, and the game's Hint, would pass the A♥, J♥ and 10♥. The checklist passes the A♦, K♣ and 9♦: clubs and diamonds are both two-card suits, so step 3 takes their highest cards and empties diamonds. Medium's pass cost you 6, 9 and 5 points passing left, right and across; the checklist's, 6, 1 and 1.

The queen and the ace. In deal 33: 2♣ 6♣ 10♣ Q♣ 4♦ 5♦ 9♦ 10♠ Q♠ A♠ 5♥ 6♥ J♥, you hold the queen and ace of spades with only one lower spade. Medium passes the Q♠, Q♣ and J♥; the checklist passes the A♠, Q♠ and Q♣. With Medium's pass you took 13 points passing left and 14 passing right. Passing left, West dropped your own queen on your ace on trick 3; passing right, it came back onto the king of spades West had passed you. With the checklist, 0 and 1. Passing across, both cost you points: 15 with Medium's pass and 14 with the checklist. Single deals swing a lot, so trust the averages above, not any one hand.

Keep playing

• Play Hearts and try the checklist against Medium and Hard. The passing Hint shows Medium's choice, so compare it with yours.
• Hearts strategy: how to follow suit, dump and fish for the queen, tested the same way
• How to shoot the moon in Hearts, the one time you should pass low
• How to play Hearts, with the full passing and scoring rules