13 Is Unlucky: Winning the Queen of Spades card on a trick will earn you 13 penalty points.It also adds other special cards (the Jack of Diamonds gives -100 points, and the 10 of Clubs doubles any points you won this hand or is worth -50 if you won no other scoring cards) and the rule of 'selling' special cards by laying them face-up on the table to double their point values note The Jack of Diamonds and Queen of Spades become -200 and +200 respectively, the 10 of Clubs quadruples your score for the hand, and the Ace of Hearts doubles every Heart card at the cost of not being able to play them during the first trick led by their suit. There also exists a Chinese variant known as Gong Zhu ('Chase the Pig') which modifies the point values of the cards, giving the Hearts individual point values (50 for the Ace, 40 for the King, 30 for the Queen, 20 for the Jack, 0 for the 4, 3, and 2 note they are still counted for shooting the moon and for the 10 of Clubs (see below), and 10 for everything else) and nerfs the Queen of Spades in comparison to the Hearts (100 points, half the combined value of the Hearts), with the score limit adjusted accordingly to 1000 points. If an entire hand is not won, no points are scored and the cards are shuffled and dealt again. If all the eligible cards in a trick are cancelled, the cards go to the winner of the next trick if all the eligible cards in the final trick are cancelled, the cards go to the last person who won a trick. The highest un-cancelled card in the led suit takes the trick. This makes for a total of 72 points per hand-and makes Shooting the Moon (see below) nigh-impossible.Ī second two-deck variant, Cancellation Hearts, has a different 'tie' rule two identical cards played in the same hand 'cancel' each other and cannot take the trick (but their points still count for the person who takes the trick). In addition, the jacks of diamonds are each worth 11 points.

The most basic variant of the game has players passing a certain number of cards (three in most four-player games) either left, right, or across before each hand, giving another chance to sink the knife in.Ī variant of the game, Dirty Hearts, uses two decks (and is often used for games involving more than four players) in the case of a tie, the first card played of a given rank takes the trick. Hearts has a reputation for being very cutthroat, as you might expect for a game whose aim is basically trying to shovel off a bag of flaming crap on your opponents.

In recent times it has experienced something of a revival, largely because Microsoft now installs an electronic version as standard on all of its operating systems up to 7. Originally popular only amongst persons of a military persuasion and a few fanatical civilians, the game quickly became first more and then less popular. An extra quirk happens if one player manages to capture all the hearts AND the queen of spades, called 'Shooting the Moon' - each other player gets 26 points if this happens. The first player to go over 100 points loses, and the player with the fewest points at this point wins. 'The Black Lady', 'Black Maria', or ' Calamity Jane') note More obscene names exist. Every heart you win counts for one point, and the queen of spades (a.k.a. However, the number of tricks won is irrelevant, what matters is the cards you win. As with most such games, the winner of the last trick puts down a card, and everyone else must put down a card of the same suit (unless he has none, in which case he puts down any card he wants) and the player with the highest card of the original suit wins. A Trick-Taking Card Game, with a major quirk.

Card game dirty hearts