World of Card Games

You can now see the pass direction and the number of hands that have been played in Hearts. The pass direction is shown as "<" for left, ">" for right, and "^" for across. If there was no passing, then only the hand count is shown.

Here, the pass direction is right, and it's the first hand of the game

If this feature bugs you, you can turn it off! Click on your user name in the upper right corner, and scroll down in the panel that opens until you get to the "Hide Widgets" line. Check the box next to Hearts, and the feature will turn off.

Turn off the feature by checking "Hide widgets" for Hearts in your User Settings

An update was applied to the site this morning. You can now play ranked Hearts with the "Tournament Rules" Option. You will see both types of ranked Hearts games in the list of tables. A table with the "Tournament Rules" Option is annotated with "tr". The "Standard Rules" table is not annotated with anything special.

two possible games of Hearts

You will get a separate Elo rating for Hearts games played with these "Tournament Rules". If you play both types of games, you will see your Elo rating for each Option in your stats area for Hearts. Just click your stats link in the upper right corner, and click the "Hearts" radio button to see your Elo and Skill for the two ranked Hearts Options. Here's a view of my stats:

stats show Tournament Rules with (tr) next to them

I hope you have fun with the new Option!

This morning, the site was updated to apply some modifications.

In Hearts, shooting the sun now only applies a penalty of 39 points to other players (as compared with the previous 52 points). It appears that a majority of players dislike the large sunshot penalty, based on a previous vote. This is an attempt at a compromise.

Also, a new Hearts Option is available. It is called "Tournament Rules". When using this new Option, the no-passing round is skipped, so you always get to pass cards. Further, if you are stuck with the Queen of Spades as your last card to play before hearts have been broken, you are not forced to lead with it. Instead, you can play a heart.

If you select "Either" for the "Tournament Rules" Option, you will be seated at either type of table. You can see what type of Options apply at your table by clicking on the "table info" link in the lower left corner of your table. Also, "Tournament Rules" tables will show up with a "tr" in the list of tables. Note: in order to "create" a table that uses Tournament Rules, you must select "Use Tourmament Rules" in the "New Hearts Option" panel, shown below. For the regular Hearts Options panel, set "Tournament Rules" to "Yes".

new Hearts Option "Tournament Rules"

Finally, in 3-5-8, the "Fan Cards Wider" Setting is now functional. You can fan your cards wider or narrower.

I've counted up the votes on the proposal to change the rules of the Hearts game. You can read the previous blog post for details. This is a summary of the proposed rule changes, along with the results:

1. Remove the "no-passing" round. There were 37 votes opposed to removing the no-pass round, 14 in favor of it.
2. Remove "shooting the sun" penalty. There were 20 votes opposed to removing the penalty, 30 in favor of it.
3. Remove forcing a person to play the Queen of Spades if hearts have not been broken and they only have hearts plus the Queen. There were 31 votes opposed to removing being forced to play the queen if hearts not broken, 10 in favor of it.

I excluded "maybe" votes when counting. The counted votes include several emails that were sent directly to me, as well as comments on the previous blog post.

I am a little bit surprised at the results, but I guess I shouldn't be too surprised. It stands to reason that anyone who feels very strongly about these rules wouldn't be playing at the site for any length of time. Apparently the one rule that the majority would like changed is the shooting the sun penalty, and this is something that doesn't happen that often.

For anyone who feels very strongly about these rules, I'm sorry. You may have heard this before: I know I can't make everyone happy. While I'd like to make the site infinitely customizable with all possible Options, I can't. Given that a majority are opposed to (1) and (3), I cannot see implementing these as a default. I may implement them as an Option to the game in the future. If I do introduce them as an Option, I'd need to put some thought into how the rule is applied to ranked games. For example, should there be a whole new ranked leader board for Hearts when played with different Options? This seems more entertaining, but is also more labor-intensive.

I have mixed feelings on (2). The main reason that people dislike the shooting the sun penalty is - correct me if I'm wrong - that it ends the game too soon, and depends too heavily on luck. I'm actually surprised that so many people are opposed to this penalty, given that other card games often have a similar rule. For example, in Bridge, there's the "grand slam". Some people play Spades with a special award for winning all the tricks (the "Boston").

If I recall correctly, the one time that I shot the sun, it could have been prevented. What I recall is that I got hit with the Queen. I had exactly one hearts card, the King of Hearts. I played the King of Hearts, someone did not cover by taking it with the Ace, and I then proceeded to take the rest.

In some cases, such as this, the "shooting the sun" penalty seems deserved. I would argue that the "shooting the sun" penalty is so severe that it encourages people to "cover their passes", to pass a low hearts card, and in general play better, strategically.

Please argue with my points in the comments section. I freely admit that I am not a very good Hearts player, and it may be that my impressions about shooting the sun are false.

Hearts Card Game!

The Hearts card game has been around in one form or another since about 1750. With such a long history, it is no surprise that numerous variations have sprung up.

The Hearts rules at World of Card Games require that after cards are dealt, each player must remove 3 cards from their hand and pass them face-down to another player. This is done in a particular order: After the first deal, cards are passed to the left. After the second deal, they are passed to the right. After the third deal, they are passed to the player across from them. And after the fourth deal, no passing is allowed - so you are stuck with the cards dealt to you. This is the "no-passing" or "hold" round.

Another rule is that if you are so lucky as to take all the tricks in a hand, you have "shot the sun", and the other players get a penalty of 52 points. It's a bit like shooting the moon (in which you take all the point cards and penalize others with 26 points), but probably involves more luck than skill.

In addition, there's a rule at the site which says you cannot lead hearts until hearts have been broken, or if you have no other cards except hearts cards in your hand. This rule is painful when you are holding just the Queen of Spades and all other cards are hearts cards. In this case, the rule forces you to lead the Queen! You'll almost always take that trick, leading to a 13 point penalty. Often, getting into this situation is just due to bad luck.

I've had a few requests to change the rules as follows:

(1) Remove the "no-passing" round. The "no-passing" round adds more of an element of luck to the game. You may get stuck with a lone Queen of Spades, which usually doesn't end well! You may also get stuck with a very good set of cards - it's all down to luck.

(2) Remove the "shooting the sun" penalty, so it is treated the same as "shooting the moon".

(3) Allow a person to lead hearts if hearts have not been broken, and they are holding only hearts cards and the Queen of Spades.

I have chatted with Joe Andrews, who is a leading expert in card games, and who ran Hearts tournaments for many years. He told me that the rules above all applied at these tournaments, so that skill was emphasized over luck. This is the reason that I'm proposing the rule changes. In particular, the strategy for passing cards is a huge factor in Hearts, and having a "no-passing" hand adds excessive randomness to the game.

I'd like to get some feedback from players at the site. Please let me know what you think about these rule changes in the comments.

Sorry for the disruption in games this morning! The site was updated to apply a few changes, mainly to the bots in Double Deck Pinochle and Euchre.

The Double Deck Pinochle bots should no longer give a meld bid twice (in some cases, they were doing this). Also, they should not be giving an ace-on-ace leadback in the trump suit anymore.

The Euchre bots were programmed to do a bit better when defending against a loner. They will lead with an ace if they have two of them. This helps to avoid having to decide which ace to discard later in the hand.

A minor change was made to the Hearts bots. This should make them play low-man Hearts a little better.

Hand histories are now available in Hearts, so you can take a look at all the cards played after the hand is over. This feature was already available in Euchre, Spades, and Pinochle. If you wish to report a bug in Hearts, please try to grab the hand history, and send it to me along with the bug report. To do this, click the little floppy disk that appears next to your nameplate after a hand. This will download a small text file that contains a link that can be used to show a replay of the hand, with all cards shown. Use this after your game to see how each card was played.

click to download your hand history

This morning's update also contained a bug fix. A few players were having trouble with a "TypeError" message when trying to get to a table. That problem has been fixed.

Also, the Spades bots got a bit of tuning to fix a bug in the way that they cover a nil bid. Thanks to "no bots plz" for reporting this issue (together with the hand history - that helped so much)!

Note: in my previous blog post, I mentioned that I would soon be adding a "decay" to the Elo ratings. I got a few comments from people who just want the Elo rating hidden. I could do this instead. Does anyone care which way this is done? The intent is to encourage people to play, rather than "sitting" on their ratings.

The cards in your hand are now fanned wider in Hearts, Spades, and Double Deck Pinochle. Also, the chat button and chat input are moved closer to your avatar. Here's the new view:
For comparison, here's the previous look:

There are two settings for fanning your cards. I had some feedback that people were misclicking cards because the cards were not clear and separate enough on smaller screens. This change is intended to help with that.

This also helps an issue that was plaguing Double Deck Pinochle players. This game starts with 20 cards in your hand, and the chat bubble would obscure a few of these if you chatted early on in the hand. With your chat bubble moved way over to the left, this should be less of a problem now.

Chat bubble in Double Deck Pinochle

Different card decks have different dimensions, so you may want to try using a new deck if your current one doesn't look as good with the new view.

Everyone reading this post probably knows that at World of Card Games, you get forced to play a card if you don't play it quickly enough. Possibly you've been frustrated in experiencing this. But people waiting for you to play your card often share a similar frustration. The timeout is designed to keep the game moving along, so that people are not stuck waiting a long time for someone to play.

If you don't like how long someone is taking, you can always "dislike" them and drop off the table. This hurts your stats, though, and many people like to finish a game once it has started. I have gotten feedback that some people like the timeouts. At other game sites, people sometimes deliberately take a long time to play, in order to get people to drop out of the game. This gives them a win, and improves their stats artificially. I don't want players at World of Card Games to have this problem.

Now with ranked games, I've gotten feedback that some do not want timeouts at all, or that the timeouts are too short. So here's a poll - it specifically refers to ranked games (currently only Hearts has a special ranked table, but rankings will come to other games asap).

I think I've set enough choices to satisfy anyone who has an opinion. If I didn't think of something, please mention it in the comments. I can always run another poll.

Note that in Hearts, the current timeouts are 30 seconds to choose your cards to pass, and 15 seconds to play a card. (I just want to mention that the "show results" link is not showing results properly... click here for current results).

If you're one of those players who hates the "Stick the Dealer" (STD) rule in Euchre at World of Card Games, you now have an option to avoid it.

Stick the Dealer option

Open your "Options" for Euchre. The new option is called "Stick the Dealer". By default, it is set to "Either". It is the least restrictive option. If you keep it this way, you'll be seated most quickly, at any Euchre table, no matter whether the rule is applied or not. If you are first to the table, the STD rule is applied.

If you really like the STD rule, you may want to click "Yes" for this option. This means you will be seated only at tables where the STD rule applies. If you are first to the table, the STD rule is applied.

If you strongly dislike the rule, click "No" for this option, and you'll be seated at tables where the rule is not applicable. If you are first to the table, the STD rule is not applied.

Note that Euchre tables where STD is applied are shown with the notation 'std' in the list of tables. In the screenshot below, the ranked Euchre table has STD applied, while the unranked one (which is for Registered Players Only - 'reg only') does not:

STD applies at all ranked Euchre games

If you are seated at a Euchre table, and you want to know whether the STD rule is enforced, just click the "table info" link in the lower left corner. It will show you all the options that apply to the game:

Euchre table info shows Stick the Dealer option

There were a few other updates this morning.

The Euchre bots have been tinkered with, so they should play a little better now. If you see them make a particularly bad move, you can always send me the hand history so I can look into the problem.

The Pinochle bots had a problem with their meld bids, and this should now be fixed as well.

In Hearts, the rule for who gets points when shooting the moon has been modified. Now, points are deducted from the shooter's score, unless adding points to the other players' scores keeps (or puts) the shooter in first place.

There's also a new "welcome" banner that can be clicked to find out more about ranked tables. You can play ranked Hearts games already. Rankings will come to other games in the next few months.

There was a bug in the update to the Hearts ratings last week which caused the losing players to get more points deducted from their Elo ratings than they should have. My apologies, I know some of you take the ratings very seriously!

I've applied a fix to the problem this morning. Anyone who would like to get their Elo ratings set back to where they were last Wednesday need only write to me and ask (marya@worldofcardgames.com). To do this, just make sure that you send me the email from the address that you registered with, so I know it's you. I will do this for people up until the end of November.

[Edit on Nov 24 2015: Only a small number of requests to reset Elo ratings have come in. After receiving negative feedback on the way this was being done, I decided to just go ahead and do the work to perform a bulk update of Elo ratings. Anyone who played at a ranked table prior to Nov 17 has had their Elo rating reset to the value from Nov 11, before the bug was introduced. To be clear, this was only done if it led to an increase in their ratings - I did not reset values that were lower.]

I've written a page about how the Elo ratings are computed at World of Card Games, so you can always check for yourself to make sure you are getting the correct results.

I've also applied a fix for the "list of tables", which had a bug that caused the list to stop updating. Third times the charm? I hope so!

Yesterday, special ranked tables were added to the Hearts card game. Ranked tables were intended to be exceptional in having strict rules: no robots allowed, and registered players only. Penalties were applied to those who left a game early.

Some players found that the "no robots allowed" policy was making it impossible to finish their games. After someone dropped out (deliberately or accidentally), they'd be stuck waiting for a long time before the game could continue. This was true even though human players are allowed to substitute at ranked tables... so such tables do show up in the "list of tables" (they don't show as ranked once a player leaves because you do not get ranked if you join such a table after it starts). Apparently, tables where "no robots" applies are especially unappealing to Hearts players.

People are not dropping out from ranked games very often, so that's good. Even so, when it happens, it leaves people waiting indefinitely for fear of losing in the rankings, which is no fun. To correct this, I've now changed the rule so that bots may replace a human who left the table. This is only permitted after the game starts. And in case it is not obvious, winning or losing to a bot does not count towards your ranking!

It is still necessary to get 4 humans together to start a ranked game... currently this involves a wait. It appears that most people prefer to start a game with bots. For those who want to play a Hearts game with humans from start to finish, ranked tables are the best way to go. I hope the wait time will lessen as more people discover rankings.

For those who are curious, a description of how "Elo ratings" are computed is given at the site.

You can now play ranked Hearts card games at World of Card Games. There are more details at that link, so take a look there if you are interested.

I've added two different rankings - an "Elo rating" and a "Skill rating" -

Elo rating and Skill rating

If you are eligible to play at a ranked table, you'll see the "ranked" table in the list of tables panel. Click on a seat to be taken to the table.

a ranked table in the list of tables with 3 seats available, note purple color

Bots are unavailable at ranked tables until near the end of the game, so I expect that it may be difficult to get a ranked game going, especially for players outside the US time zone [Edit: as of Oct 3 2015, bots may be invited as soon as someone drops out]. I don't think it makes a lot of sense to rank individuals against bots, though, since they don't have expert levels of skill.

There are several advantages to playing at a ranked table: because quitting a table has a more serious penalty than simply taking a loss, it can be hoped that players will be less likely to quit. In addition to your Elo rating taking a hit, quitting gets you banned from ranked tables for 4 hours. This means that you should find more reliable players at the ranked tables, on average.

I'll be playing at the ranked Hearts tables on and off during the day, and look forward to hearing from people about their experiences with it.

If you experience any problems or bugs after this update, please let me know. There were some major changes!

I'm asking for feedback about new Hearts options. If you've played Hearts at World of Card Games, you may have noticed that there's an option to "Allow First Turn Hearts":

allow first turn hearts option

The default rules require that you cannot play Hearts on the first trick. However, if you choose this option, it is allowed, provided that you do not have any Clubs in your hand.

Over the last two years, I've had requests for several other options:

1. Someone would like to see the Omnibus Hearts option, described at Pagat: it applies a bonus to the player who takes the Jack of Diamonds. That person gets 10 points deducted from their score, even if someone else shoots the moon or sun.
2. Someone has a house rule that disallows passing the Queen of Spades. The idea is that by passing the Queen of Spades, two players know where it is, giving them an unfair advantage over the other two players. I haven't seen this variation before.
3. Another user would like to see a shorter version of Hearts, in which the maximum score is perhaps 56. This would let people play a quick game when they don't have so much time.
4. A player requests that when the Queen of Spades is played, Hearts should not be broken. Only when the first Heart card is played should Hearts be broken, allowing others to lead with Hearts.
5. Someone is interested in seeing a redeal option which would work as follows: if a new player takes a seat that has a high score, then with the agreement of all players, the game would be reset. I'm inclined to oppose this option, because it seems to me that it's about the same as having everyone leave the table and start over.

What do you think? I cannot promise that I'll have time to implement any of these in the near future, since I have a number of issues to address that are high on my to-do list. However, it helps to know if a majority of players want a specific option, so I can prioritize accordingly.

If you have your own favorite option that you don't see here, post it in the comment section!

There's a Hearts tutorial at World of Card Games. It's designed to introduce you to the mechanics of Hearts, but barely scratches the surface when it comes to strategy. The help box has a few hints, too, but it's minimal.

After playing a few hundred games of Hearts, I think I've gotten a little better at it. This was, in part, due to some players who discussed strategy with me. Thanks to those who did so in a polite manner, you know who you are!

It's nice to share, so I wrote up a discussion of Hearts strategy and placed it on the site. There's a comment section where anyone can add their thoughts, and you can also tweet them, or post in the comments section here. Or send me an email. I will rewrite sections of that page based upon feedback.

I want to mention that I like the way that some more expert players try to help those who are beginners to the games. I don't mean the ones who mock beginners! I mean the ones who offer to explain or give a short tip to people who confess to being inexperienced. It benefits everyone to help those who are new. They are more likely to continue to play when people are friendly and not mean. It's a win-win to get more good players to your favorite card game.

Possibly the most frequent complaint that I get at World of Card Games is about people quitting games. I've been collecting some statistics to see how the site is affected by habitual quitters. Here are the results!

The charts below are histograms that show the number of players divided up according to their quitting patterns. Players who rarely quit - between 0 and 10% of their games - are "bucketed" in the first column. Players who quit a lot - 90%-100% of their games - are bucketed in the last column. The rest are divided into buckets between those percentiles.

Private tables are ignored in these statistics, as are tables with only a single human player. Quitting from such tables is not a major problem. On the other hand, if you enter a game and then quickly leave, you are getting counted as a quitter for the purpose of these statistics. So the charts may make things look a little (or a lot?) worse than they are.



Euchre is a fairly quick game - you are usually done in 10 minutes. Quitters are not as big a problem, here.
One noticeable thing is that the games that take longer tend to be affected more by quitting. I do wonder how big a factor this is in quitting.

The server was out briefly for an update this morning. Sorry for the interruption in games!

The update included a couple of changes. There was a bug in Gin Rummy which caused bots to time out, occasionally. Thanks to everyone who reported this! I found a problem which caused that, and fixed it. Please let me know if you see any other problems.

The drag-and-drop functionality in Gin Rummy has also been altered slightly, so you can now see the card that you've picked up to sort. I hope this makes sorting a little easier. Also, sorting now works on tablets - at least on the devices that I have available for testing. Let me know if this does not work for you.

Finally, the Hearts robots have been tuned up a bit, so they will no longer be so cooperative towards someone attempting to shoot.

A few days ago, I attended another live in-person card game event - my third!

We had an odd number of people, so it was decided to play a 5-person game of "Oh Heck!" while waiting for more to arrive. I have never played this before, and was taught the rules on the fly. I did not have a stroke of beginner's luck, and lost badly. It will take some practice to improve.

After this I moved on to a game of Spades. I had a great partner. We took the lead and never looked back. I knew that one of our opponents was a complete beginner, learning the game as we played. It was only after the game was over that I discovered that our other opponent was also relatively new to the game. So I felt a twinge of guilt. We should have arranged the partners differently so that the handicap was more even.

My last game of the evening was Hearts. I usually do poorly at Hearts... and I kept making errors in following suit or throwing out my card at the wrong time. It didn't help that I was getting tired. I wound up losing that game as well.

Despite the overall loss, I had a great time! For me, the social aspect of card games overrides my success ratio. I'm looking forward to the next event!