Hearts

Shoot the sun or the moon? Unusual tricks, bribes and risky strategies in the American card game “Hearts”

“Whist is a Bridge for fools, and Hearts is a Bridge for round fools,” reads a quote from Stephen King’s novel Hearts in Atlantis.

“Hearts”, a particularly popular game in America in the 20th century, is indeed similar to “Whist”. It is a kind of bribery game. In the game of Hearts, participants try to avoid being bribed.

The object of the game is to score the least amount of points per game.

Rules of the game:

The cards are dealt equally to all players.
The round begins with an exchange of cards.

In Round I - with the players sitting on the right;
In Round II - with the players to the left;
In Round III - with the players sitting opposite;
In round IV there is no exchange.
And so on.

The game is started by the player with the 2 clubs card.
Then the players play a bribe, i.e. they place cards of the same suit in turn from left to right. The player who places a card of the highest suit gets all the cards of the bribe. If a player has no cards of that suit, he can play any other card.
Heart cards can only be discarded if the other suits are exhausted or if someone has discarded a Heart card in the bribe.
When a player takes a bribe, he gets 1 point for each Heart card and 13 points for the Queen of Spades.
As soon as one of the players reaches 100 points, the game ends. The player with the lowest score is the winner.

There are 2 tricks you can use to get ahead of your opponents:

1.”Shooting the Moon”. If you collect all the point cards for a round, you get no points and your opponents get 26 points each.

2.”Shooting the Sun”. If you collect all the bribes for a round, you scores no points and his opponents score 52 points each.