Porchlight › How to play › Hearts
How to play Hearts
A trick-taking card game for four players, each playing for themselves. The object is to avoid taking points.
The aim
Every heart you take costs 1 point and the queen of spades costs 13. When someone reaches the target score, the game ends and the lowest score wins.
Setting up
The whole deck is dealt, 13 cards each. Aces are high.
Before play, each player passes three cards face down. The direction changes each hand: to the left, then to the right, then across, then no passing, and round again. Nobody sees what they've been passed until all four have chosen.
Playing
The player holding the 2 of clubs leads it. Play goes clockwise.
- You must follow suit if you can. If you can't, play any card.
- The highest card of the suit led wins the trick. There are no trumps.
- The winner of a trick leads the next one.
Two restrictions apply:
- The first trick: you can't play a heart or the queen of spades unless you have nothing else. If your whole hand is hearts and the queen, you must play a heart.
- Leading hearts: you can't lead a heart until a heart has been played on an earlier trick ("hearts are broken"), unless hearts are all you hold. The queen of spades does not break hearts.
Scoring
At the end of each hand, you score the points in the tricks you took.
| Card | Points |
|---|---|
| Each heart | 1 |
| Queen of spades | 13 |
| Everything else | 0 |
Shooting the moon. If one player takes all 26 points in a hand, they score 0 and everyone else scores 26. There is no option to subtract 26 from your own score instead.
Winning
After each hand, if any player has reached the target score, the game ends. The lowest score wins. Players on the same score share a place.
Table options
| Option | Choices | Default |
|---|---|---|
| Play to | 50 or 100 points | 100 |
| Turn timer | Normal, Relaxed (twice as long), Quick (half as long) | Normal |
Ranked games always use the defaults.
On Porchlight
You sit at the bottom. The other players sit to your left, across from you and to your right.
- Passing. Click three cards to choose them. Click a chosen card again to put it back; choosing a fourth swaps out your earliest pick. Then press the Pass button, which names the direction.
- Playing. Cards you can legally play are lit. Click one to play it. The arrow keys move between cards.
- During the first trick, the cards you were passed are highlighted so you can see them.
On a Normal timer you have 45 seconds to pass and 25 seconds to play a card. If time runs out, the computer plays for you. If it runs out twice in a row, you're out of the game: a computer player takes your seat and you're placed last. The same happens if you leave, or if your connection drops and you don't come back within about a minute.
The host can fill empty seats with computer players. Hearts has one computer level.
Tips
- Pass the queen of spades unless you hold enough spades to keep her safe.
- The ace and king of spades are dangerous while the queen is still out.
- Empty a suit early, so you can throw hearts and high cards on it later.
- If one player is collecting every heart, taking a single heart yourself stops them shooting the moon.