Play with other people
Anyone can join a table with its code. There are no accounts and nothing to install. A hearts table is always four seats, and any seat nobody is sitting in is played by the computer — so a table works with two people, or three, or four.
Your table code
Send the link to whoever you want to play with. It opens the game with this table already chosen; they still pick their own name. If it is easier to read the code out, that works too.
Send the code to the people you want to play with, wait for them to appear in the seats below, then start. Any seat still empty is played by the computer, so you can start whenever you like.
Seats
| Seat | Who | Status |
|---|
Start a game
The game
What you can do
Your hand
This trick
Last completed trick
Players
| Player | Cards | This hand | Score |
|---|
Hands played
What has happened G
Newest entry first. Press G to jump here, then Up and Down to move entry by entry, Home for the newest and End for the oldest. This region is never spoken automatically, so you can read back through it at your own pace.
How hearts works
The object
Take as few points as possible. Every heart is one point and the queen of spades is thirteen — twenty-six in every hand. When somebody reaches the target the game ends, and the player with the lowest score wins.
Passing
Before each hand you give three cards away and are given three in return. Everybody chooses at the same time, so you commit before you see what is coming. The direction rotates: left, right, across, and then a hand where nobody passes at all.
The play
- Whoever holds the two of clubs leads it. That is not a choice.
- Follow the suit led if you can. There is no trump, so the highest card of the suit led takes the trick.
- No hearts and no queen of spades on the first trick, unless that is all you hold.
- Hearts cannot be led until somebody has discarded one on another suit. That is what “hearts are broken” means.
Shooting the moon
Take all twenty-six points and the hand turns inside out: you score nothing and everybody else scores twenty-six. It is worth watching for — if somebody has taken every heart so far, letting them have one is cheaper than letting them have the rest.
Playing by keyboard
Every shortcut below is also a button on screen, so nothing is only reachable one way.
- Left and Right move along your hand; Enter plays or selects the card you are on.
- H reads your hand.
- T reads the trick so far.
- S reads the scores.
- P reads what points have been taken this hand.
- W says who is at the table.
- Enter on a button does what the button says.