Hearts uses a standard 52 card deck.

Number of players: 4

Goals

Hearts is a trick-taking game where the goal is to minimize the number of points received.

Start of Game

The deck is shuffled at the start of the game and each player is dealt 13 cards from the deck.

Gameplay

Once the cards are dealt, the player with the 2♣️ will go first. During each round (which is called a trick), players will each play one card — going clockwise and starting with the winner of the previous round.

Players must play a card matching the suit of the first player in each round unless they do not have any. In that case, players are free to play any card. The winner of each round is the one who plays the highest card of the suit lead by the first player.

Cards are assigned point values as follows:

• Hearts - 1 point

• Q ♠️ - 13 points

Once all cards have been played, players count the total number of points they have won and add that to their total score. The cards are then reshuffled and dealt to the players with play continuing until a player reaches a threshold (usually 75 or 100 points).

If a player manages to win all of the hearts and Q ♠️ — reaching 26 points — the player receives 0 points instead and all of the remaining players receive 26 points.

End of Game

The game ends once a player has reached a predetermined number of points (usually 75 or 100). Player rankings are determined by going from lowest score to highest score.

Interested in playing Hearts online against friends or other live opponents? Click here to begin playing