Free Games How to play Hearts
- Start a new game and you'll be dealt 13 cards with three computer players around you. Click any card in your hand to play your turn, and watch the computer players respond automatically.
- The goal is to win each round by avoiding hearts and the Queen of Spades, which carry penalties. The player with the lowest score after the entire game wins.
- At any time, click Settings to change opponent names and difficulty levels (1 is easiest, 4 is hardest), then click Apply to start a fresh game with your choices.
- If you have never played a trick-taking game: each of the four players lays down one card, and those four cards are a trick. The first card played sets the suit, and everyone else must play that suit if they hold one. Whoever played the highest card of the suit that was led takes all four cards and leads the next trick. There are no trumps in Hearts, so a card of another suit can never win a trick — it can only be thrown away.
- To play a card, click it once. It lifts clear of your hand and a large button labelled Go appears in the bottom-right corner. Click that to commit. Click the same card again to lower it and change your mind.
- Cards you are allowed to play glow pale blue when it is your turn. The rest will not lift at all, so you cannot make an illegal move by accident.
- The first trick of every round is always led with the two of clubs, by whoever holds it. A message says so if that player is you.
- You may not lead a heart until a heart has been played on some earlier trick. In this version the queen of spades does not open hearts — only an actual heart does.
- Before each round you pass three cards. Click three, then click the large white arrow in the middle of the table. When the three you have been given arrive, click Confirm.
- New Game and Settings sit in the bottom-left corner of the table.
Tips that actually help
- Learn the arithmetic first, because every decision comes out of it. Each heart is one point and the queen of spades is thirteen, so a whole round is worth twenty-six and more than half of that danger sits in one card. Lowest total wins, and the game stops when someone reaches a hundred.
- Use the pass to empty a suit rather than to dump big cards. Three high hearts given away is a small gain; three cards that leave you with no diamonds at all is a large one, because from then on every diamond lead is a free chance to throw the queen of spades or a heart onto somebody else’s trick.
- Decide early whether you are guarding the queen of spades or getting rid of her. Holding her with only one or two other spades is dangerous, because the first spade lead can force her out of your hand. With four or more small spades you can hold her safely and pick your moment. The ace and king of spades are their own problem: they win spade tricks, and one of those tricks may contain the queen.
- When you lead, lead low, and lead the suit you hold most of. The lead is the only time you choose the suit, and a two or a three almost guarantees somebody else takes the trick, which hands them the lead and the risk.
- When you follow, play the highest card you have that is still below the card currently winning. You shed a dangerous high card and take nothing for it. This is the single habit that lowers most people’s scores.
- If you hold several small spades and none of the ace, king or queen, lead spades early. Every spade lead drags the high spades out of other hands, and once the queen has gone the rest of the round is much calmer.
- Shooting the moon means taking all thirteen hearts and the queen of spades in one round. Do it and you score nothing while the other three take twenty-six each. It needs a long suit headed by the ace and king, and most of the high hearts. If somebody else looks like doing it, take one heart yourself to break it — a few points now is far better than twenty-six.
- Be careful on the very first trick. This version does not protect it: a player holding no clubs may legally throw a heart, or the queen of spades, onto that opening trick. If you are void in clubs yourself, that is your first chance to be rid of her.
Playing Hearts comfortably
Playing a card takes two separate clicks, and that is a real advantage here. The first click only lifts the card; nothing is committed until you press the large button in the bottom-right corner, which is about 200 pixels wide with 40-pixel text. A slipped click costs you nothing, and clicking the lifted card again puts it back. Legal cards glow pale blue; the rest do not respond at all.
The cards themselves are the weak point. They are a fixed 85 by 130 pixels, and the rank is printed once, in small type of about 15 pixels, in the top-left corner only. The large symbol in the middle gives you the suit but not the rank. Cards in your hand overlap, so in a full hand of thirteen it is only that small corner you can read. On a computer, browser zoom does enlarge them, because their size is fixed rather than fitted to the window — go too far and the ends of your hand run off the table. On a tablet the game switches pinch-zoom off, so you cannot enlarge them that way.
The cards are plain elements rather than buttons, so the Tab key will not reach them: the game needs a mouse, a trackpad or a touchscreen. There is no clock anywhere and no move timer — the computer players simply take a moment to think, and the hardest setting takes about two seconds a turn. If a score panel is sitting over a card you want to see, move the pointer onto the panel and it fades almost to nothing. Nothing pops up over the cards while a hand is in play. If you would rather play cards on your own, without three opponents and without a running score, Solitaire and Pyramid here are quieter games entirely.
If something is not working
I clicked a card and nothing happened.
Either it is not your turn yet, or that card is not legal at this moment. Legal cards glow pale blue when your turn comes round. On the opening trick of a round, if you hold the two of clubs it is the only card you may lead, and a message on the table says so.
My card lifted but was never played.
Lifting is only the first half. Click the large button in the bottom-right corner to actually put the card down. If you would rather choose again, click the lifted card a second time and it drops back into your hand.
The passing arrow will not appear.
It shows only when exactly three cards are lifted. If you click a fourth, the first one you chose quietly goes back down, so count the raised cards before you look for the arrow.
Which player is sitting where?
The settings list labels the other three East, North and West, but the table does not match those labels. On screen, Player 2 sits on your left, Player 3 opposite you and Player 4 on your right. The passing message — left, right or opposite — always describes the table, so follow that rather than the compass names.
How do I start a fresh game?
Press New Game in the bottom-left corner. Your browser asks you to confirm first, because it ends the hand in progress. Pressing Apply in Settings does the same thing, so change names or difficulty between games rather than during one.
Does my game survive a reload?
No. The hand and all the scores are lost the moment the page reloads. The opponents’ names and difficulty levels are remembered on your own device, but nothing else is.
Where Hearts came from
Hearts belongs to a small family of card games in which the object is to avoid winning tricks rather than to win them, which is a strange idea the first time you meet it. Its ancestor is Reversis, a trick-avoidance game that became popular in Spain around 1750. The modern game appeared in the United States in the 1880s; a writer of the day noted it had only been played there for about five years and guessed it was probably German in origin.
The queen of spades was not there at the start. She was added in 1909 as the highest penalty card, in a variant called either Discard Hearts, after the new habit of passing unwanted cards on after the deal, or Black Lady, after the nickname for the card itself. Shooting the moon is younger still: taking every penalty card in one round first appeared in Britain in 1939, in a variant called Hitting the Moon. Both of those late additions are in the version on this page, and between them they are most of what makes the game interesting.
Common questions
How do I play Hearts?
You and three opponents are dealt 13 cards each. Take turns playing one card at a time. You must follow the suit led if you can, but if you don't have that suit, you may play any card. Avoid taking hearts (worth 1 point each) and the Queen of Spades (worth 13 points). Lowest score wins.
Can I change the difficulty?
Yes. Click the Settings button at the top, and you'll see difficulty levels 1-4 for each opponent. Level 1 uses simple strategy, while levels 2-4 use more advanced AI that thinks several moves ahead. Choose your level and click Apply.
What does shooting the moon mean?
Taking all thirteen hearts and the queen of spades in a single round. Instead of the twenty-six points you would normally have collected, you score nothing and each of the other three takes twenty-six. It is rare, and it is why you should never let one player quietly collect heart after heart.
When does the game finish?
As soon as any player’s running total reaches a hundred or more. The lowest total wins, and the table tells you whether you won or lost. Until then the game keeps dealing new rounds.
Why will the game not let me lead a heart?
Hearts stay closed until one has been played on a trick, which usually happens when somebody runs out of the suit that was led and throws a heart away. Once that has happened you may lead hearts freely for the rest of the round.
Do I pass three cards every single round?
Yes. The direction rotates: to your right, then across the table, then to your left, then to your right again. Some printed rule books include a fourth round where nobody passes and you keep the hand you were dealt. This version does not have one.
Which opponent is the hardest?
By default the player on your right is set to level 3 and the one on your left to level 1, so they are not equally strong. You can set each of the three between 1 and 4 in Settings. Level 1 plays simply; level 4 thinks for about two seconds before every card.
About this version
This is a self-hosted, open-source version of Hearts (source), used under its BSD-2-Clause licence and hosted here so it loads fast and shows no third-party adverts inside the game. Browse all of our free games.
