Hearts — Play the Card Game Online

Hearts is the classic four-player trick-taking card game where the winner is the player who takes the fewest points. Every heart you capture costs 1 point, the Queen of Spades costs a punishing 13, and one daring exception turns the whole game upside down: capture every penalty card in a hand and you “shoot the moon”, handing 26 points to each opponent instead. Bundled with Windows since 1992, Hearts sits right beside Solitaire and FreeCell in the memory of anyone who grew up with a family PC — and here you can play it free in your browser against three AI opponents, with no download and no sign-up.

What Is Hearts?

Hearts belongs to the trick-taking family of card games: each player throws one card per round (a “trick”), and the highest card of the suit that was led captures the trick. Unlike Spades or Bridge, however, Hearts is a game of avoidance — most tricks are safe to win, but any trick containing a heart or the Queen of Spades adds points to your score, and points are bad. The tension between winning tricks to control the flow and ducking tricks to dodge penalties is what has kept Hearts a favorite for over a century.

The game descends from the 19th-century French game of Reversis, and the modern rules — penalty hearts, the 13-point Queen of Spades (nicknamed “the Black Lady”), passing, and shooting the moon — settled into their familiar shape in America around the 1920s. Its digital fame came later: Microsoft shipped Hearts with Windows 3.1, and for millions of people it became the four-player counterpart to Klondike Solitaire.

How to Play Hearts: The Rules

1. Deal. A standard 52-card deck is dealt evenly to four players — 13 cards each. There are no partnerships: everyone plays for themselves.
2. Pass three cards. Each player picks 3 cards and passes them face-down. The direction rotates every hand: left, then right, then across, then a “hold” hand with no pass.
3. The 2 of Clubs opens. Whoever holds the 2♣ leads it to the first trick. No penalty cards (hearts or the Q♠) may be played on this first trick.
4. Follow suit. You must play a card of the suit that was led if you have one. If you are out of that suit, you may discard anything — including a heart or the Queen of Spades.
5. Highest card wins the trick. The highest card of the led suit takes the trick; that player leads the next one. Off-suit cards can never win a trick.
6. Hearts must be broken. You cannot lead a heart until a heart has been played on an earlier trick (unless hearts are all you have left).
7. Score the hand. When all 13 tricks are played, count your captured penalty cards: 1 point per heart, 13 for the Q♠.
8. Play to 100. Hands repeat until someone reaches 100 points. The player with the lowest total wins the game.

The Passing Phase: Where Games Are Won

Passing looks like housekeeping but is really the strategic heart of the game. The standard advice: get rid of your high spades (Ace and King of Spades are magnets for the Queen), unload dangerous middle hearts, and try to void a suit entirely — an empty suit means that the moment it is led, you can throw the Queen of Spades or a fat heart onto someone else’s trick. What you pass also telegraphs less than what you keep: holding low cards in every suit gives you an escape route in the endgame, when the players still holding only high cards are forced to win the very tricks they were dreading.

Scoring

There are exactly 26 penalty points in every hand:

• Each of the 13 hearts — 1 point
• The Queen of Spades — 13 points
• All other cards — 0 points

Low score wins, and the margin matters: a hand where you take 2 points while an opponent eats the Queen swings the game by 11. Experienced players think of every trick in these terms — not “can I win this?” but “what will winning this cost me?”

Shooting the Moon

The one glorious exception to everything above: if a single player captures all 26 penalty points — every heart and the Queen of Spades — the penalty reverses. The shooter scores nothing and each opponent is handed 26 points. A successful moon is the biggest single swing in the game; a failed one, where a lone heart slips away on the last few tricks, usually means you have eaten close to 26 points for nothing. Watch for the warning signs in your opponents’ play: someone who suddenly starts winning heart tricks on purpose is not being generous.

Strategy: How to Keep Your Score Low

1. Count the spades above the Queen. Only the Ace and King outrank her. If you hold them with no small spades for cover, you are in danger every time spades are led.
2. Lead low spades early if you do not hold the Queen — it pressures whoever does, and flushes her out before she can be saved for you.
3. Create a void. Emptying a suit (usually clubs or diamonds) turns every later lead of that suit into a free chance to dump penalties.
4. Keep low hearts as armor. A hand with the 2–5 of hearts can duck under almost any heart trick. It is the all-high hands that get punished.
5. Take an early, cheap trick when it buys you the lead at a safe moment — control of the lead lets you steer toward suits where you are short.
6. Watch the discards. When an opponent shows out of a suit, remember it. That suit is now the one they will use to poison your tricks.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

• Passing the Queen of Spades reflexively — sometimes keeping her with plenty of low spades for protection is far safer than gifting her to the player passing to you later.
• Holding the Ace or King of Spades “because they are strong” — in Hearts, strength is a liability in the danger suit.
• Leading hearts as soon as they break, handing everyone else a cheap chance to duck.
• Winning late tricks with high cards when every remaining trick is stuffed with hearts.
• Ignoring the score: at 95 points an opponent will play completely differently, and so should you.

Hearts vs Spades

The two Windows-era classics are easy to confuse and almost perfect opposites. In Spades you bid tricks and try to win what you promised, usually in partnerships. In Hearts there are no bids and no partners — you spend most of the game trying to lose tricks, and the drama comes from the penalty cards. If you enjoy careful, information-driven play, you will feel at home: like Spider Solitaire or FreeCell, Hearts rewards remembering what has been played and planning several tricks ahead — except here the puzzle fights back.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the goal of Hearts?

Hearts is a trick-avoidance game: you want the LOWEST score. Every heart you capture in a trick costs 1 point and the Queen of Spades costs 13. The game ends when any player reaches 100 points, and the player with the fewest points wins.

Why is the Queen of Spades so important?

She is worth 13 points — as much as every heart combined. Most of the strategy in Hearts revolves around not capturing her, forcing her onto an opponent, or (rarely) using her to shoot the moon. If you hold the Ace or King of Spades, be careful: a long spade trick can drop the Queen right on you.

What does “shooting the moon” mean?

If one player captures ALL 26 penalty points in a hand — every heart plus the Queen of Spades — the penalty reverses: that player scores 0 and every opponent is given 26 points. It is high-risk: miss a single heart and you eat nearly all the points yourself.

What does “breaking hearts” mean?

You may not LEAD a heart until hearts have been “broken” — that is, until a heart has been played earlier in the hand — normally by a player discarding one when they could not follow suit. The only exception: if your hand is nothing but hearts, you may lead one.

How does passing work?

Before play, each player chooses 3 cards to pass. The direction rotates each hand: left, then right, then across, then a hold hand with no passing — and the cycle repeats. Passing high spades and dangerous middle hearts is a core part of the strategy.

Who leads the first trick?

Whoever holds the 2 of Clubs must lead it to open the hand. No penalty cards may be played on this first trick, so it is always a safe trick — unless a player has no choice.

Is Hearts a solitaire game?

No — Hearts is a four-player trick-taking game, not a patience game. Here you play against three AI opponents, so it works as a single-player experience in your browser, right alongside our 44 solitaire games.

Is Hearts free to play here?

Yes — completely free, in your browser, with no download and no sign-up, just like every other game on Pure Solitaire.

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