An Easy-to-Understand Beginner’s Guide to the Hearts Card Game

Hearts are also called Rickey Kate in Australia, this game is straightforward, and if you are smart enough, then you can learn the strategies to win it. Here we have for you the heart card game’s rules.

Players and deals: strategies used in a hearts card game

Though the game is played between two people, many people play this game among 6. A deck of 52 cards excluding joker is used in it. In case you three people are playing this game, then you can discard the red diamond so that you can efficiently distribute 51 cards between three players. In case 4 of you are playing this game, then you can remove lower rank clubs, to make the distribution easy. 

Deal: a beginner’s guide to the hearts card game 

If you 4 of you are playing this game, then you each of you should have 13 cards. The games go clockwise. You have to pass three cards having the face down to the player on your left side. In the second round, you have to give cards to the right and pick the cards from your left. In the third round, you’ll be passing the cards to the player in your opposite direction and will choose the cards from the opposite. No passing happens in the fourth round. 

Till the games terminate, the cycle keeps on repeating. 

In case you are three players, don’t play the third hand. If you are playing in 2, you have to repeat 1st hand and fourth hand.

You have to be the one with the minimum score to win the game.

Variations

Kitty

In this, you will be given 12 cards instead of 13. If there are more or less than four players, then the cards won’t be evenly dealt. 

Passing in kitty

1. You can pass left, right, and across. There’s no hold hand pass.
2. You will play with one card with each other instead of 3.
3. All the players will have to discard three cards in the center, which are shuffled to be dealt with again. 

Turbo hearts

1. Richard Garfield introduced this variant. This variant is similar to the Chinese game catch the pig. 
2. Jack of diamonds is the bonus card 
3. If you acquire ten of clubs, then your score gets doubled. 
4. After the passing of the following cards: ace of hearts, tens of clubs, jack of diamonds or queen of spades, the player turbo charges. Before the first lead, also the player turbo charges. 
5. Any turbocharged card doubles the value for that hand. In the case of the ace of hearts, the amount of all hearts gets doubled. In the case of ten clubs, the score will multiply by four times for that hand.

Spot hearts

There are penalty points in this variation, according to the face value. The jack and hearts have 11 points each, 2-10 have their face value, the queen has 12 points, the king has 13 points, and ace has 14 points. Queen of spades having the highest points i.e., 25. The scoring limit is 500 instead of 100.

Black Maria

1. Though it is stated as a variant, it is entirely a different game, which means bad lady.
2. After removing two of the clubs, 51 cards are dealt with equally, with each player having 17 cards.
3. There’s no obligation on hearts; you can leaf anything. 

The above-mentioned information will help you to know how to play hearts and card games.