The short version: Hearts is a four-player trick-taking game where you want the fewest points, hearts cost one each and the queen of spades costs thirteen, you pass three cards before every hand except every fourth one, and shooting the moon means collecting every single point card yourself so your opponents each take twenty-six instead of you taking any. Get the passing right and the moon shot becomes obvious rather than lucky.
What you need to play
Hearts uses a standard 52 card deck, no jokers, four players, no partnerships in the basic version. Deal all 52 cards so everyone gets thirteen. There's no trump suit, which trips up people who learned Spades or Euchre first. The whole game is built on avoiding cards, not collecting them, and that inversion is what makes it feel odd for the first few hands.
The player holding the two of clubs after the deal leads the first trick of the first hand, and it must be led with the two of clubs specifically. That's not a suggestion, it's the rule every scoring app and physical rulebook agrees on.
The passing rules
Before play starts on most hands, each player chooses three cards from their thirteen and passes them face down to another player. The direction rotates on a four hand cycle:
- Hand 1: pass three cards to the player on your left
- Hand 2: pass three cards to the player on your right
- Hand 3: pass three cards across the table
- Hand 4: no passing at all, you keep your own thirteen cards
Then the cycle repeats: left, right, across, hold. Everyone passes at the same time, so you choose your three cards before seeing what you're about to receive. This is where most casual players lose games without realising it. They pass their three worst cards, usually high spades or a stray queen of spades, without thinking about what those cards will do in someone else's hand. If you're sitting with the queen of spades and no low spades to protect it, passing it on is often correct, but passing it to the player who then has three low spades left to force it out is a gift you didn't need to give.
How a trick is played
The leader plays any card except a heart on the very first trick of a hand (hearts can't lead the opening trick under any circumstance). Every other player must follow suit if they can. If you can't follow suit, you can play anything, including a heart or the queen of spades, and this is exactly how players get rid of dangerous cards early.
The highest card of the suit led wins the trick, and that player leads the next one. "Hearts breaking" is the rule people forget most often: nobody can lead a heart until a heart has already been played on some earlier trick, either because a player was void in the led suit and dumped a heart, or because someone had no choice. Once hearts have broken, they're fair game to lead from that point in the hand onward.
Scoring, the part that decides the game
At the end of each hand, every heart collected is worth one point and the queen of spades is worth thirteen points on its own. That's 26 points available per hand in the standard version. Nobody wants points. The game ends when a player reaches 100 points, and whoever has the lowest score at that point wins, regardless of how many hands were played to get there.
A few scoring quirks that trip people up:
- The ace, king, and jack of spades are worth nothing on their own; only the queen carries points.
- Clubs and diamonds are worth zero points in the standard game (some variants add the jack of diamonds as minus ten, more on that below).
- A hand where nobody takes any hearts or the queen is possible and scores everyone zero for that hand.
Shooting the moon
Shooting the moon means one player takes every heart and the queen of spades in a single hand, all 26 points. Instead of that player scoring 26, every other player scores 26 instead, and the shooter scores zero. Some house rules let the shooter choose to subtract 26 from their own score instead of adding 26 to everyone else's, but the standard and more common rule is the 26 added to opponents.
It's a big swing. If the game is close and one player is sitting on 60 while everyone else is on 40, a successful moon shot can put that leading player almost out of reach in a single hand, or blow the game wide open if it fails halfway through.
A worked example
Say you're dealt a hand with the ace, king and queen of hearts, six other hearts, the ace and king of spades, and five low clubs and diamonds. That's a strong moon hand: you control the top of hearts so nobody can dump a small heart on you and win a trick you don't want, and you hold the ace and king of spades to protect against someone forcing the queen of spades out early. You lead your low clubs and diamonds first to draw out other suits, then start leading your high hearts once they've broken. By the tenth or eleventh trick you either have every heart and the queen of spades, or you've been stopped somewhere along the way, usually because an opponent was void in hearts early and dumped the queen of spades on your ace of hearts trick before you could collect it yourself.
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If it works: you score zero, the other three players each go from wherever they were to plus 26. If it fails at trick eleven with two hearts left in someone else's hand: you've likely just taken 24 or 25 points yourself, which is close to the worst possible outcome in the game. That's the real risk profile of the moon shot, it's rarely a small loss when it fails.
The uncomfortable bit most guides skip
Most strategy articles talk up shooting the moon as the exciting, skilled play, and treat card counting as the main skill in Hearts. In practice, over a full game to 100 points, careful passing wins more games than moon shots do. Attempting the moon and failing is one of the most common ways players hand a bad game to an opponent who was previously losing. The safer, less glamorous skill is reading your hand at the passing stage: if you don't hold at least the ace or king of hearts alongside several other high hearts and protection in spades, you should be passing for safety, not building toward a moon shot that has maybe a one in four or one in five real chance of completing once you account for how the other thirteen cards are distributed. Good Hearts players attempt the moon rarely and only when the hand supports it, not every time they see three hearts in a row.
Common variants worth knowing
- Omnibus Hearts: adds the jack of diamonds as minus 10 points, so collecting it during a hand helps you, which changes passing decisions significantly.
- Spot Hearts: each heart is worth its own pip value rather than a flat one point, so the ten of hearts costs ten points and the two costs two.
- Black Maria: a British relative that also penalises the ace and king of spades, not just the queen, making spades far more dangerous to hold.
- Three player and five player Hearts: remove or add cards from the deck to keep the hand count even, and passing patterns change to match the player count.
If you're teaching Hearts to someone who only knows simpler games, it helps to compare it to something they already understand. Anyone who's played Crazy Eights already gets the idea of following suit and racing to avoid a penalty, Hearts just adds the scoring and passing layers on top.
Playing Hearts without wifi
Hearts is one of the easiest card games to keep in your back pocket for a train, a flight or a long wait, because all you need is a standard deck. If you're building a list of things to play when there's no signal, it sits comfortably alongside the kind of options covered in free games for a plane with no wifi, and plenty of solitaire style Hearts apps work entirely offline once downloaded, similar to the wider selection in no internet games that work with zero data. If you'd rather download a batch of games once and forget about connectivity altogether, a resource like 1000 free games to play offline covers that ground too.
A quick pre-hand checklist
- Deal 13 cards to each of 4 players from a standard 52 card deck.
- Pass 3 cards left, right, across, or hold, on a repeating 4 hand cycle.
- Whoever holds the two of clubs leads the first trick with it.
- Follow suit if you can; if you can't, play anything.
- No hearts can be led until hearts have broken.
- Each heart scores 1 point, the queen of spades scores 13, game ends at 100 points.
- Lowest total score when someone hits 100 wins the game.
This guide is part of my Free Games to Play Offline and Online: Every Guide in One Place (2026).
Frequently asked questions
Can you lead a heart on the very first trick?
No. The opening trick of a hand must be led with a non heart card, and traditionally the player holding the two of clubs leads that exact card. Hearts can only be led once they've broken on a later trick.
What happens if you can't follow suit in Hearts?
If you have no cards of the suit that was led, you can play any card from your hand, including a heart or the queen of spades. This is the main way dangerous cards get discarded early in a hand.
Does shooting the moon always add 26 points to opponents?
In the standard rule, yes, each of the other three players gains 26 points and the shooter scores zero. Some house rules let the shooter subtract 26 from their own score instead, so it's worth agreeing on this before the game starts.
How many points do you need to end a game of Hearts?
The game ends as soon as any player reaches 100 points at the end of a hand, and the player with the lowest total score at that moment wins, even if others are still under 100.
