Shooting the moon is a strategy where a player takes all the point cards (all the hearts cards and the Queen of Spades) during a hand. You cannot lead with a point card until hearts have been broken.

It refers to playing a point card (a heart card or the Queen of Spades) on a trick after the first trick. If you are the last to play a card and your lowest in-suit card will win the trick and the trick contains points, you might as well play your highest in-suit card since you are taking that trick no matter what.įrequently asked questions What is 'breaking hearts'?.Try and remember which high cards have been played, especially the Queen of Spades.Playing high cards early in the hand is safer since your opponents will often still have cards in that suit.

No points can be played on the first trick, so you can safely play the highest card you have.

That way, if you don't get passed any in that suit, you will have more opportunities to ditch unwanted cards during gameplay.

If you have less than 3 cards in a given suit, it may be wise to pass all of them.

Passing the Queen of Spades to your right is pretty safe, but be careful passing the Queen of Spades to your left.

But only if you have 3 or more Spades in your hand.

If you have the Queen of Spades, you may want to keep it.

You normally want to pass your high cards, Aces, Kings and Queens.

We've summed up the most important strategic points below, but if you really want to improve your game, we suggest reading through our Hearts game strategy guide as well. The second is to carefully choose which cards to play in tricks to prevent taking penalty points. The first one is to try to pass undesirable cards so you won't be stuck with them. There are two main goals when it comes to playing strategically. The player with the lowest score when the game ends wins. When a player reaches 100 points, the game ends. When a Hearts card or Queen of Spades is first played, it's known as 'Breaking hearts', and after that, Hearts can be led. Players must follow suit, but if they can't, they can play any card. The objective of the game is to avoid taking point cards, where a suit of Hearts card is worth 1 point, and the Queen of Spades is worth 13 points.Īt the start of the game, each player is dealt 13 cards, and on each round, players pass 3 cards to another player. The player with the lowest score wins the game. It's a trick-avoidance game played by 4 players. It even includes an interactive tutorial that'll take you through a game while explaining the rules to you. If you haven't played the game before, we suggest having a look at our thorough guide on how to play Hearts. If you're in need of a refresher on the rules, we've summed them up below.

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