Kickin' It Jun 2014 | Page 13

Spend your friday night playing this fun and intense game of HEARTS!

What is required?

•A full deck of 52 cards (without jokers)

•A pen and paper to keep score

•4 players

Objective:

•The objective of Hearts is to get as few hearts as possible and to accumulate the least points. Each heart gives one point, and the queen of spades gives 13 points.

Rules:

•In a game of Hearts, the dealer (whomever is chosen to deal first) must hand out 13 cards to each player. The dealer lays the deck facing downwards with one card turned over facing upwards beside the deck.

•Each player chooses any 3 cards to pass to their opponent that is to the left of them. On the next hand, the 3 chosen cards will be passed to the right, then on the next hand passed across the table. On the last hand, there will be no passing; the player keeps all their cards. This routine is repeated from the beginning after the hold (goes to the left again).

•The player who has the 2 of clubs leads the game. The next player must follow suit and goes left of the leader. If the player doesn’t have the same suit in their hand, they can play another suit (usually a high heart so that they can get rid of them). The player who lays the highest ranking card takes the trick (picks up the four cards on the table and starts the next turn). If there are any points to be recorded for that player (if they have a heart or a queen of spades in the trick), they must be added to the players score.

•You want to avoid getting tricks that have any hearts or especially the queen of spades to keep your score low.

•You can’t lead a trick with hearts until hearts have been broken. This means that if no one has played a heart on another suit, then you cannot start the round with a heart. Also, in the very first round of the game, you can’t play a heart or a queen of spades, even if you don’t have a card that follows suit of the lead card.

•Once all cards have been played, the player with the least points wins that hand. You play until someone reaches 100 points or more and the player with the least points wins. If the points get to over 100, and there are two players or more with the least points with equal scores, than the game continues until there is only one winner.

•However there is one extra rule to this game. If you get all of the points (13 hearts and the queen of spades), you get 0 points and the other 3 players gets 26 points each.

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