Hearts Hollow

What is Hearts?

Hearts is a four-player trick-taking game where the goal is to take as few points as you can. Every heart you win is worth 1 point, and the Queen of Spades is worth 13. There are no teams and no trump suit. It's every player for themselves, and the lowest score at the end wins.

It's a game of ducking and dumping: getting rid of dangerous cards on other people while keeping yourself clean. Then there's the twist. If one player takes every single point in a hand, the scoring flips in their favor. That's shooting the moon, and it keeps every hand interesting.

Hearts Hollow is free and plays in your browser on a phone, tablet or computer. You sit at a mossy stump with Fennel the fox, Olwen the owl and Pip the hedgehog.

How to play Hearts

The deal

Use a standard 52-card deck, dealt out completely so everyone has 13 cards. Aces are high, twos are low.

Passing cards

Before play starts, each player chooses 3 cards to pass to another player. The direction changes every hand in a cycle of four: pass left, pass right, pass across, then a keep hand where nobody passes. Passing is your chance to get rid of trouble, and also a chance to receive some.

Playing tricks

• Whoever holds the 2 of clubs leads it to start the first trick.
• Going around the table, each player plays one card. You must follow suit if you can.
• If you can't follow suit, you can play any card. This is how you dump hearts and the Queen on other players.
• The highest card of the suit that was led wins the trick and all the cards in it. There's no trump, so an off-suit card never wins.
• The winner of each trick leads the next one.

Two small rules that matter

• No points on the first trick. If you can't follow clubs on the opening trick, you can't throw a heart or the Queen of Spades, unless that's literally all you have.
• Breaking hearts. You can't lead a heart until a heart has been played on some earlier trick (usually by someone who couldn't follow suit). The only exception is if you hold nothing but hearts.

How scoring works

There are 26 points in every hand. After each hand, everyone adds what they took. When someone reaches the match target (100 in a classic match, 50 in a quick one), the game ends and the player with the lowest score wins. If two players are tied for lowest, play continues until there's a clear winner.

Shooting the moon

If you take all 13 hearts and the Queen of Spades in a single hand, you score 0 and every other player takes 26. It's the biggest swing in the game.

Shooting the moon is risky. If you go for it and someone else takes even one heart, you're stuck with a pile of points. The hands that can do it usually have long, high suits (several cards from ace down), high hearts, and the Queen of Spades or good protection for it. You also need to be able to get the lead back when you lose it.

In Hearts Hollow, watch for the moon lantern. It lights up when one player has taken every point so far in a hand. If it's lit for someone else, it's time to take a heart yourself, even if it costs you a point, to stop the 26.

Controls

Tap three cards to pass, then tap the pass button. During play, tap a card to play it. If you prefer to confirm first, set Playing a card to Tap twice in settings. Illegal cards are blocked and the game explains why. A lightbulb button offers a hint if you're stuck.

On a computer, arrow keys move through your hand, Enter or Space plays, and Esc pauses. You can switch to fast speed or a four-color deck in settings, and save and quit to finish a match later.

Difficulty, Daily Deal and match score

Choose Easy, Normal or Hard before you play. Your match score is 100 for a win, plus 50, plus how far you finished under the other players' average score (or minus how far over). Normal counts x1.5 and Hard counts x2.

The Daily Deal is three hands with the same cards for everyone that day, passing left, then right, then across. You start with 78 and lose a point for every point you take. Shoot the moon and you lose nothing for that hand and get a 20 point bonus on top. Compare your score on the leaderboard and keep your day streak going.

Ranks, tables and card backs

Every hand earns XP, with bonuses for winning hands and for your first hand of the day. XP takes you through 12 ranks, from Seedling and Sprout up through Willow, Old Oak and Moon Keeper to Heart of the Wood. New tables unlock as you rank up: Autumn Glade, Frost Hollow, Blossom Ring and Starlit Hollow, after the starting Mossy Stump.

Milestones unlock card backs for every card game on our site: your first match win, five clean hands (no points taken), shooting the moon, a win on Hard, and ten match wins. Your stats in The Hollow track moons shot, clean hands and how often you dodged the Queen.

Hearts strategy tips

What to pass

• Pass the Queen, King and Ace of Spades if you have few spades to hide them behind. With four or five low spades, you can often keep the Queen safely, and even use it to stick someone else.
• Try to void a suit, meaning pass every card you hold in a short suit. Once you're out of a suit, you can throw hearts and the Queen whenever it's led.
• High hearts are good passes. Low hearts (2 through 5) are safe to keep, because they almost never win a trick.
• Remember what you passed and to whom. If you passed the Queen left, you know exactly who has it.

During the hand

• Play your highest card that still loses the trick. If the 10 of diamonds is winning and you hold the 9 and the 3, throw the 9. You're saving the 3 for later, when you'll need it to duck.
• If you don't hold the Queen of Spades, lead low spades early. This is called flushing the Queen: you force whoever has her to play her or keep sweating.
• If you do hold the Queen, protect her with other spades and wait for a chance to dump her on someone who can't follow suit.
• Count the spades. Once the Ace and King have gone by, your Queen can't be forced out by a higher spade.
• Early in the hand, taking a trick with no points in it is often fine. It's the late tricks, when everyone is void and dumping, that hurt.
• Keep an eye on the scores. If one player is about to reach the target and you're behind them, you may want to feed them points to end the game while you're lowest.

Questions