A Trick-Taking Card Game, with a major quirk. As with most such games, the winner of the last trick puts down a card, and everyone else must put down a card of the same suit (unless he has none, in which case he puts down any card he wants) and the player with the highest card of the original suit wins. However, the number of tricks won is irrelevant, what matters is the cards you win. Every heart you win counts for one point, and the queen of spades (a.k.a. "The Black Lady", "Black Maria", or "Calamity Jane")note counts for 13 points. The first player to go over 100 points loses, and the player with the fewest points at this point wins. An extra quirk happens if one player manages to capture all the hearts AND the queen of spades, called "Shooting the Moon" — each other player gets 26 points if this happens.
Originally popular only amongst persons of a military persuasion and a few fanatical civilians, the game quickly became first more and then less popular. In recent times it has experienced something of a revival, largely because Microsoft now installs an electronic version as standard on all of its operating systems up to 7. Hearts has a reputation for being very cutthroat, as you might expect for a game whose aim is basically trying to shovel off a bag of flaming crap on your opponents. The most basic variant of the game has players passing a certain number of cards (three in most four-player games) either left, right, or across before each hand, giving another chance to sink the knife in.
A variant of the game, Dirty Hearts, uses two decks (and is often used for games involving more than four players); in the case of a tie, the first card played of a given rank takes the trick. In addition, the jacks of diamonds are each worth 11 points. This makes for a total of 72 points per hand—and makes Shooting the Moon (see below) nigh-impossible.
A second two-deck variant, Cancellation Hearts, has a different "tie" rule; two identical cards played in the same hand "cancel" each other and cannot take the trick (but their points still count for the person who takes the trick). The highest un-cancelled card in the led suit takes the trick. If all the eligible cards in a trick are cancelled, the cards go to the winner of the next trick; if all the eligible cards in the final trick are cancelled, the cards go to the last person who won a trick. If an entire hand is not won, no points are scored and the cards are shuffled and dealt again.
There also exists a Chinese variant known as Gong Zhu ("Chase the Pig") which modifies the point values of the cards, giving the Hearts individual point values (50 for the Ace, 40 for the King, 30 for the Queen, 20 for the Jack, 0 for the 4, 3, and 2note , and 10 for everything else) and nerfs the Queen of Spades in comparison to the Hearts (100 points, half the combined value of the Hearts), with the score limit adjusted accordingly to 1000 points. It also adds other special cards (the Jack of Diamonds gives -100 points, and the 10 of Clubs doubles any points you won this hand or is worth -50 if you won no other scoring cards) and the rule of "selling" special cards by laying them face-up on the table to double their point valuesnote at the cost of not being able to play them during the first trick led by their suit.
This card game contains examples of:
- 13 Is Unlucky: Winning the Queen of Spades card on a trick will earn you 13 penalty points.
- Ace Of Spades: By itself its not a penalty card, but it is a liability, because whoever plays it (or the King of Spades) on a spade-led trick is almost certain to win the dreaded Queen of Spades card (the exception is when it's the last card played and the Queen isn't out). This means the player has to avoid playing these two cards at all costs, until they can safely get rid of them.
- Artificial Brilliance: If you play Hearts on Trickster Cards against the A.I., the computer players will make decisions that mirror the strategies of an actual Hearts professional. One such example is when you're trying to shoot the moon and have the Ace of Hearts but not the King, when you play the Ace then the player who has the King will not play it so they can take it themselves and avoid you from shooting the moon. Trickster's A.I. is typically smarter because most other A.I. in Hearts games, in the same scenario, will have them play the King since they're programmed to play the highest card below the lead.
- Artificial Stupidity: Hearts Card Classic has an "Easy Mode", where the A.I. will play any card as long as it's in the same suit as the lead (when possible). This may result in the A.I. taking the Queen of Spades by themselves, especially when they're not intending to shoot the moon.
- Awesome, but Impractical: Shooting the moon is an alternate way to win a round. Achieved by essentially doing everything you don't want to normally do - winning all the hearts cards and the Queen of Spades. All 26 accumulated points will be passed onto all your opponents instead, but it's incredibly risky. Any savvy player will see through the ruse the minute you lead tricks "recklessly", and can spite you by derailing the attempt. Not to mention, there will be instances where the hearts suit is prematurely broken, before you can prepare and sometimes you may not even get to lead that opening trick you need.
- Batman Gambit: Much of the game depends on being able to judge when to put out which cards to ensure that everyone else wins the tricks which would give points. Trouble is, everyone else is thinking the same thing... Even more so when trying to Shoot the Moon, where you basically have to trick all the other players into handing you over all their point cards.
- Can't Catch Up: If you unluckily keep winning the high-penalty Queen of Spades card in several tricks involving her, you'll accumulate so many points you're unable to win the game, no matter how well you play.
- Can't Kill You, Still Need You: If one player is very close to losing, the players in second and third place will often try to make sure they don't take any points, or make it so the player with the highest points shoots the moon, in order to build up the winning player's score.
- Comeback Mechanic: Some players use a rule that makes the Jack of Diamonds subtract ten points from your score, potentially getting -10 points if you get it and nothing else. On one hand, a player who is in the 90s and thus has no pretty much no chance of winning otherwise is still in the game; however, it can potentially cause a player's score to go into the negatives.
- Controllable Helplessness:
- You may have the means to easily shoot the moon, but having nearly every card from a suit does nothing for you, if you can't lead an opening trick to attempt it before hearts are played.
- Holding the King or Ace of Spades and not many other Spade cards often results in a player squirming for a few tricks before inevitably taking the Queen, unless they get lucky and somehow no one plays Spades for a while. This is especially the case if the person in front of you keeps playing Spades, meaning they have no baggage whatsoever and whoever has the Queen is after you.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: Expect at least one per game, after one player is dealt a particularly good or bad hand.
- Cycle of Hurting: Towards the end of a match, a player may suddenly find they're leading tricks with a suit no one else has, and therefore unable to stop winning the remaining hearts left in play, or worse, the Queen of Spades.
- Death or Glory Attack: A true attempt at Shooting The Moon will result in succeeding and dealing out 26 points to the other players or failing and eating up to 25 points.
- Deliberate Injury Gambit: Sometimes, you need to take a trick you could otherwise avoid to prevent someone from shooting the moon or to get rid of a high card early on before it becomes a major liability. Sure, you might be taking at least a few points, but it's better than being stuck with the lead late in the hand or being forced to eat the queen of spades.
- Didn't See That Coming: Even the most cautious player can end up accidentally winning the dreaded Queen of Spades on a random trick, simply because their opponent didn't have any card of the suit they lead with, allowing them to dump her on them without warning.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: Originally, Hearts was just a simple trick-evasion game where the only point cards are the Hearts. This changed in the early 1990s with the Black Lady variant that introduces the Queen of Spades as a high penalty card, and it later ended up overshadowing the original Hearts in popularity so much that the name "Hearts" is typically associated with Black Lady more than the original version.
- Enemy Mine: A strategy amongst high-level Hearts players is to team up and make sure that the winning player racks up points if they are close to losing and are far ahead in points from the winning player. This is sometimes done by forcefully playing as many spades as possible until the winning player gets the Queen.
- Fixing the Game: A good player will try to count the number of spades or hearts and perhaps their values. Better players will keep track of both and the best will keep track of them all.
- Failure Gambit: With the right (or wrong) hand, a player will often set out to take all the point cards. The queen is worth thirteen and the remaining point cards also total up to thirteen, but grab them all and it's everyone else who has to suffer the consequences. Of course, everyone knows about this, meaning you can also seem like you're trying to shoot the moon when you're really just getting rid of your high cards when nobody is sure if they should be using theirs.
- God Save Us from the Queen!: Specifically, the Queen of Spades, who gives 13 points, a very bad thing.
- Golden Snitch: Shooting the Moon counts: difficult to achieve, and doing so gives 26 points to other players.
- Gotta Catch Them All: Inverted and played straight. Collecting all of the points cards, or Shooting the Moon, is the most devastating attack strategy possible, but collecting none of them (as long as no one else shoots the moon) is a better and safer strategy for most hands.
- Kingmaker Scenario: Defied. Shooting the moon normally adds 26 to everyone's score; but on the rare occasion that this would end the game and make the shooter lose, that is a problem. If this happens, shooting the moon will instead subtract 26 points from the shooter's score.
- Luck-Based Mission: With some hands, you just can't win. Too many high cards yet not quite enough, or perhaps ending up with the queen in your hand but not enough spades to keep you from having to play it. Other times you can't lose because there's no way for anyone to make you take a trick you don't want to. Very rarely, there are also hands where someone can shoot the moon without needing to bother with any sort of tricks.
- Misère Game: Each heart card is worth one point, and the Queen of Spades is worth 13 points. Gameplay ends when someone scores 100 points, at which point the player with the lowest score is the winner.
- Not Quite Dead: Your opponent can be on 99 points and you can still lose if he Shoots the Moon successfully a couple of times.
- No Unified Ruleset: Hearts is played differently around the world, but the most popular variant is Black Lady, where the Queen of Spades merits 13 points, cards are passed, and the moon shot rule is viable. Some variants add extra penalty cards (such as the King and Ace of Spades in the British variant Black Maria), point reducer cards (such as the Jack of Diamonds in Omnibus Hearts), and point multiplier cards (such as the Ten of Clubs in the Chinese variant Gong Zhu).
- One-Man Party: The queen of spades counts for exactly as many points as all the other cards put together.
- Show, Don't Tell: Players must use clubs on the first trick, and if they don't have any, are forbidden to play any card with penalty points. Any opponent that puts a diamond or spade down on the first trick deserves extra wariness, because leading a trick with a club again leaves them free to dispose of the Queen of Spades (if they have her).
- Springtime for Hitler: An unsuccessful attempt to shoot the moon "awards" a large number of points to the losing player - up to 25, or one-fourth of the points required to end the game - and nearly guarantees that you will lose.
- Taking the Bullet: Sometimes, you may have to take a heart or even the queen to prevent another player from taking it and losing the game (or shooting the moon). Just because you didn't hit 100 yourself doesn't mean you won.
- That One Player: If you're trying to shoot the moon, it's the guy who takes away that moment. If you're seeing somebody else try to shoot the moon, it's that player. That guy who goes last... and plays the queen of spades on you once he knows you'll get her - it's that player.
- Trick-Taking Card Game: The highest card of the suit lead takes each trick, starting off the next hand. Players seek to avoid taking hearts (1 pt. each) or the Queen of Spades (13 pts.), unless one of the players Shoots the Moon by collecting the entire set. Whoever has the lowest score when someone breaks 100 points wins the game.
- Whammy: While the hearts certainly sting when you have to collect them, the queen of spades is definitely this trope, since it's the point value of all the heart cards totaled.
