Hearts Online: Free Hearts Card Game [Single + Multiplayer]

Play Hearts online to your heart's content. You can pair up with people by joining one of our tables, play by yourself against our bots or create a private table and invite your friends and family to play. The game is free to play and is played online, so no download or registration is required.

Hearts is a 4-player trick-taking card game, much like Spades. However, unlike Spades, the game's objective is to take as fewest tricks as possible and avoid scoring points. Because of this, it's known as a game of evasion.

Rules

If you're in need of a refresher on the rules, we've summed them up below. If you haven't played the game before, we suggest having a look at our thorough guide on how to play Hearts. It even includes an interactive tutorial that'll take you through a game while explaining the rules to you.

It's a trick-avoidance game played by 4 players. The player with the lowest score wins the game. 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.

At the start of the game, each player is dealt 13 cards, and on each round, players pass 3 cards to another player. The 2 of Club starts the round. Players must follow suit, but if they can't, they can play any card.

When a Hearts card or Queen of Spades is first played, it's known as "Breaking hearts", and after that, Hearts can be led. When a player reaches 100 points, the game ends. The player with the lowest score when the game ends wins.

Strategy

There are two main goals when it comes to playing strategically. The first one is to try to pass undesirable cards so you won't be stuck with them. The second is to carefully choose which cards to play in tricks to prevent taking penalty points.

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.

Passing:

• You normally want to pass your high cards, Aces, Kings and Queens.
• If you have the Queen of Spades, you may want to keep it. But only if you have 3 or more Spades in your hand. Otherwise, you may want to pass it.
• Passing the Queen of Spades to your right is pretty safe, but be careful passing the Queen of Spades to your left.
• If you have less than 3 cards in a given suit, it may be wise to pass all of them. That way, if you don't get passed any in that suit, you will have more opportunities to ditch unwanted cards during gameplay.

Playing:

• No points can be played on the first trick, so you can safely play the highest card you have.
• Playing high cards early in the hand is safer since your opponents will often still have cards in that suit.
• Try and remember which high cards have been played, especially the Queen of Spades.
• 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.

Frequently asked questions

What is "breaking hearts"?

It refers to playing a point card (a heart card or the Queen of Spades) on a trick after the first trick. You cannot lead with a point card until hearts have been broken.

What does "shooting the moon" mean?

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. If successful, the other players are given a penalty of 26 points, or the player shooting the moon can subtract 26 points from their own score.

What is the difference between "shooting the moon" and "shooting the sun"?

Shooting the sun is a rarer and more difficult feat than shooting the moon. To shoot the sun, a player must take all the cards in hand, both point and non-point. If successful, the other players are penalized with 39 points.