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Hearts Rules and Scoring, Plus Playing Against the Computer

Hearts is the trick taking game that runs backwards. Every other game in the family rewards you for capturing cards. Hearts punishes you for it, and the whole skill of the game is losing tricks on purpose without ever quite looking like you are.

Here is how the scoring works, and how to play a full game on your phone against three opponents that actually count cards.

The scoring, in one table

A standard hand distributes exactly 26 penalty points:

Thirteen hearts plus the black lady is 26. Lowest total wins, and the game ends when somebody crosses 100, at which point the player with the fewest points has won.

That fixed 26 is the sanity check on any Hearts score sheet: if a hand does not total 26 across the four players, a trick was miscounted.

Shooting the moon

The one exception, and the reason Hearts is a better game than its scoring suggests.

If a single player captures all thirteen hearts and the queen of spades, they shoot the moon. Instead of taking 26, they score zero and every other player takes 26.

It turns the last third of most hands into a quiet standoff. Once one player has taken several hearts, the rest of the table has to decide whether to keep dumping penalties on them or start defending the moon, and getting that judgment wrong is far more expensive than the hearts themselves.

The passing rotation

Before each hand you pass three cards, and the direction rotates:

1. Pass left
2. Pass right
3. Pass across
4. Hold, no pass at all

Then the cycle repeats. The hold hand plays very differently from the others, because nobody has been able to shed the queen of spades.

The rest of the rules that matter

• The player holding the two of clubs leads it to the first trick.
• You must follow suit if you can.
• Hearts are not broken at the start: you cannot lead a heart until one has been discarded on

another suit, or you have nothing else.

• No penalty cards on the first trick.

Playing Hearts against the computer

Braggster deals a real four player Hearts game against three rule based AI opponents. Not a simulation of a score sheet: a genuine deal, the pass, thirteen tricks and round scoring, reached from match setup the same way the board games are.

The AI is worth a note. At the harder difficulty tiers it card counts and defends the moon, which is the specific behaviour that separates a Hearts opponent worth playing from one that just dumps its highest card. There is no tree search behind it and no background thread: it is heuristic play, tuned for the decisions that actually decide Hearts hands.

The practice game plays standard scoring. If you have a variant saved on your match (omnibus, spot, cancellation), the practice game coerces it to standard, because those variants change the penalty table rather than the play.

Keeping score for a table of four humans

If you are playing with real cards, the manual scorecard does the arithmetic across hands and flags the running total against the 100 point finish. Since Hearts is lowest wins, the ranking is inverted throughout: the leader on your screen is the player with the fewest points, not the most.

Frequently asked questions

How many points is the queen of spades in Hearts? 13, which is half the hand on its own. The thirteen hearts are worth 1 each for the other 13.

What score ends a game of Hearts? 100 points. The game ends as soon as any player reaches or passes it, and the lowest score wins.

What is shooting the moon worth? Taking all 26 penalty points yourself gives you zero and gives every other player 26.

Can I play Hearts offline against the computer? Yes. The AI runs entirely on the device, so there is no connection needed and no account to create.

Do practice games count towards my statistics? Games you play against the computer in Braggster's practice screens are not recorded, so your record reflects games against real people.

Are the variants supported? Omnibus, spot and cancellation can be recorded on a manual match. The in app practice game plays standard Hearts.

More: browse every card game at braggster.com/games, or read the overview of card game scoring.