Hearts is a trick-taking card game played by four players. This card game as currently known, originated with a family of associated games called Reversis, which were popular around 1750 in Spain. The game has become popular in live play among grade school students in Canada, and has increased in popularity through Internet gaming websites. In many parts of the world it became known through the Microsoft version of the game packaged with most 1990s versions of its Windows operating system.

Play free online Hearts! The Games.com team is happy and proud to announce that Hearts is now LIVE! This is our first multi-player card game with Stars in it. Invite your friends to play and enjoy. Hearts, one of the most popular, enduring card games in the world, is great fun for players of all ages, though the rules can be somewhat tricky for rookies. Hearts is a 4-player trick-taking card game where the aim is to avoid getting penalty points. Hearts is the third card game I've made, the other two are Shithead and Crazy Eights. I used to play Hearts a lot when I was younger, it was one of the games that came with every version of Windows. I wanted to be able to play Hearts online, and just didn't think all the hundreds of other versions of Hearts would do!

You can play mobile Hearts on our website. This free online game is available in browser across all your Android, iOS and Windows devices. Good luck and have a good time!

Basic Rules

Hearts is a four-player point-based strategy card game. The object of the game is to be the player with the fewest points. Cards have the following point values: Hearts: 1 point, Queen of Spades: gives 13 points, Other cards: 0 points.

The layout

This game uses the standard 52-card pack. Each player is dealt a hand of 13 cards from a 52 card deck. The hand is sorted by suit, then rank: Hearts, Diamonds, Spades, Clubs. Cards that are out of play are inactive and darkened.

To Win

The game ends when a player reaches 100 points. The winner is the player with the lowest total score.

How to play

The game begins with all cards being deal. Next, each player chooses three cards, and passes them to another player. After receiving 3 cards passed to you, the first trick is led by the player to the left of the dealer. Play continues in a clockwise manner. Each player plays one card and together they are called a trick. The highest card in the led suit wins and the point value of all the cards in that trick are assessed. You must follow suit until your hand is absent of the led suit. At that point, any card can be played. The player that wins the trick now leads a card. Hearts cannot be led until they are BROKEN by either someone playing a Heart or the Queen of Spades on a trick. Play continues in this manner until all cards are gone.

Variations:

There are many variations of this awesome game such as: Small Hearts, Queens, Rickety Kate, Partnership Hearts, Likha, Booster Nines, 500 Hearts.

Hearts strategies and tips:

Hearts Card Game For Computer

Success in Hearts is largely determined by the cards you discard before every hand. There are two basic passing strategies. The first, and most obvious, is simply to rid your hand of the dangerous cards: High hearts; the ace, king, or queen of spades; and any other high cards. A second strategy is to try to empty your hand of a single suit by passing only one suit to your opponent. Once you have no cards of a particular suit left, you can discard your dangerous cards every time that suit is led.

When playing with the queen of spades, the number of points in each round doubles from 13 to 26 (the queen being worth 13 points). Therefore, the danger of taking any trick is decidedly increased. It's better to keep the Queen of spades and dump her on someone during play than to discard her only to have her dumped back on you. But you can't keep the Queen unless you have enough spades to defend her (four is best, three is chancy). The best insurance against picking up the Queen of spades is to lead low spades every chance you get.

The most obvious strategy is to play low cards, which is all well and good if you have them, but somewhat more difficult when you do not. A good rule to follow when beginning is to play your high cards on the first lead of a suit and move to your lower cards when the suit is led again. With each play of a suit it is increasingly likely that one of the other players will be out of that suit and thus able to discard points (either hearts or, far worse, the queen of spades.

Hearts Card Game online, free

You can play classic Hearts online on our website. And it's free! No download, no login required, simple gameplay! Good luck and have a good time! Find us on the web as 'Hearts 444'.

Rules of Hearts

Here are the rules for the card game Hearts:

1. The objective of Hearts is to get as few hearts as possible. Each heart gives you one penalty point. There is also a special card, which is the Queen of Spades. It gives you 13 penalty points! This is a game where you want a lower score rather than high.
2. To begin, each player will be dealt 13 cards. You'll then select three cards when the game begins to pass to one of the opponents. Typically it's best to pass your three worst cards to try and get rid of them. The opponent which you pass to varies (we'll handle that part for you), you start by passing to the opponent on your left. Then, in the following game you pass to your opponent on the right. For the third game you pass straight across the table and in the 4th game you keep your cards and do not pass any.
3. The player who has the 2 of clubs at the beginning leads in the first hand, and that player has to lead with the 2 of clubs.
4. Each turn begins with one player laying a single card, which is called 'leading.' That card's suit determines the suit of the trick. Then each of the players each plays one card.
5. If they have a card in the same suit as the first card then that suit must be played. If not, they can play any of their other cards. Once 4 cards have been played, the player who played the highest ranking card takes the trick. This means he or she takes the 4 cards on the table and starts the next turn. Any penalty cards (any hearts or queen of spades) the trick are added to the player's penalty score. Try to avoid these unless you are shooting the moon which we'll touch on later.
6. You may not lead a trick with hearts until hearts has been played on another suit (aka 'broken'). If it is your turn to lead and no hearts have been played thus far, you cannot select a heart as the card to play. In some versions of game Hearts you cannot play the Queen of Spades until hearts has been broken, but in this variation you can always play the queen of spades and it doesn't break hearts.
7. In the first round you may not play a heart or the queen of spades, even if you do not possess any card in the suit of the starting card.
8. After all cards have been played, the penalty points are counted and the player with the smallest number of points wins that particular hand. When one of the players reaches at least 100 points then the game is finished, and the player with the least number of points is the winner. If points are over 100 and there are 2 or more equal with the fewest points then play will continue until there is only one clear winner.
9. Back to 'shooting the moon.' Typically it is not good to get penalty cards, but there is a circumstance where it can hugely benefit you. If you get ALL the penalty cards (thirteen hearts and the Queen of Spades) then you get zero points and all other players get 26 points each. Trying this can be a somewhat risky move, since if another player gets just one of the hearts you will end up with lots of points. Alright, now that we've we've got that down let's play some Hearts!