Rules of Hearts

Note that these rules are mostly copied from the app Hearts from AI Factory Limited. The ruleset here is the one that OtterFan48 uses.

In Hearts, the first dealer is decided by each player cutting the deck and revealing the top card, with the player revealing the highest ranked card becoming the first dealer. If the ranks are tied, the winner is decided by Bridge's standard suit ranking: ♠️, ♥️, ♦️, ♣️.

After a Hand, the deal passes to the player to the left of the dealer of the previous Hand.

## Overview

Hearts is a four player trick taking game played over a series of Hands. The goal is to be the player with the least points when the first player passes 100 points. Points are scored by winning tricks containing ♥️ and the Queen of ♠️. The *only* ways to lose points is by winning the trick containing the Jack of ♦️.

## The Deal

At the start of each Hand, the deck is shuffled by the Dealer and cut by the player on the Dealer's right (to avoid the Dealer stacking the deck). Then 13 cards are dealt face down to each player. Each player can only look at their own cards.

The cards are ranked, from highest to lowest: Ace, King, Queen, Jack, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2.

## Card Passing

Before any tricks are played, each player must choose and pass 3 cards from their hand face down to the opponent to their left. Each player picks which cards to pass and passes them to the opponents at the same time, and finally add their newly obtained cards to their hand at the same time.

## Playing Tricks

Once cards have been passed, trick playing starts.

A trick consists of each player playing one card in turn onto the table and whoever plays the highest card wins that trick. The four cards are then cleared from the table and placed face down next to the winner in order to track points won.

The first player to play a card in a trick is called the lead player. At the start of each hand, the lead player is the player with the 2 of ♣️, and they must play this card to get the game started. In following tricks, the lead player is the player who won the previous trick. The lead player can play any card in their hand, apart from a ♥️ if no ♥️ has been played before. When a ♥️ is eventually played, ♥️ are then said to have been broken and any player from then on are allowed to lead with a ♥️.

Once a card has been led in the trick, play then proceeds clockwise around the table.

The other non-lead players must meet the following rules when playing their card:

* If the player has a card of the same suit as to that which was led, they **must** play a card of that suit.
* If the player does not have a card of the lead sit, they can play any card, including a ♥️.
* No penalty cards (♥️ or Queen of ♠️) can be played in the first trick, unless a player has nothing but penalty cards in their hand.

## Resolving Trick Winner

Once all players have played a card, and there are four cards on the table, the player with the highest ranked card in the lead suit wins the trick (there are no trump suits in Hearts).

Play then proceeds onto the next trick, with the previous trick winner playing the lead card. Once all 13 tricks have been played, and the players have no cards left, the Hand is over.

## Scoring

Scoring in Hearts is based on the cards contained in the tricks each player wins. Only the ♥️, Queen of ♠️ and Jack of ♦️ have any bearing on the score. The points for these are shown below:

* Any ♥️ = 1 point
* Queen of ♠️ = 13 points
* Jack of ♦️ = - 10 points

## Shooting the Moon

This is a special scoring case. This happens when a player manages (usually deliberately) to win every single penalty point scoring card. If a player manages to do this, they are rewarded by scoring 0 for that round, and by all 3 opponents having 26 points added to their score.

A player who shoots the moon *will* still get the - 10 points if they also win the trick containing the Jack of ♦️.

## End of Game

The game continues with new Hands until at least one player reaches or passes 100 points. When this happens, the player with the lowest amount of points wins the game.