If punishing your opponents with points would cause one of them to take first place and win, then your score will be reduced by either 26 or 39 points instead. This will punish other players with 39 points! This is a VERY rare occurrence and is a sight to behold! This happens if you manage to take all 13 tricks, thus every single card. When you 'Shoot the Moon' all other players are punished with 26 points.Įven more difficult is 'Shooting the Sun'. However, if you do the opposite and manage to take every single point card (every Heart card and the Queen of Spades) then you will have 'Shot the Moon'. Normally you try and avoid taking point cards, because points are bad. From this point on players can lead Hearts. See the 'Game Specific Options' section below.) The first time a Heart card or the Queen of Spades is played is known as 'breaking hear ts'. If the game has the Option to 'Allow First Turn Hearts', then you may play Hearts on the first trick if you have no Clubs at all. On the first trick, you may not play Hearts or the Queen of Spades. If they do not have a card with that suit, they may play any card. Players must play a card with the same suit as the lead card. Whoever played the highest card with the same suit as the lead card, takes the cards. The other players then each play a card in clockwise order until all 4 players have played a card. The player with the 2 of Clubs starts things off by playing it. This cycle then repeats itself until the end of the game. Cards are passed to the left on the first hand, to the right on the second hand, across on the third hand, and no cards are passed on the fourth hand. PassĮach player chooses 3 cards to pass to another player. The Queen of Spades is worth 13 points! DealĮach player is dealt a hand of 13 cards from a standard deck of 52 cards. The objective is to avoid taking cards worth points and to finish the game with the lowest score.

However, wise players will form temporary alliances as the game progresses, with the 3 high-point players cooperating to give points to the player with the lowest points during each hand.Ĭards are ranked from Ace (high) down to 2 (low).ĭiscussion of advanced hearts strategy Objective Hearts is a 4 player 'trick avoidance' game.

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