Hearts Scoring
Twenty-six points go out every hand. Your entire job is making sure they land somewhere else.
Play Hearts freeHearts is scored backwards from most card games: points are penalties, and the lowest total wins. Exactly 26 points are distributed every hand, no more and no less, so the game is a zero-sum argument about who gets stuck with them.
What each card is worth
| Card | Penalty |
|---|---|
| Each heart (13 of them) | 1 point each |
| Queen of Spades | 13 points |
| Every other card | 0 |
| Total in play each hand | 26 points |
The single most important fact on this page: the Queen of Spades is worth as much as all thirteen hearts combined. One card carries half the hand's danger, which is why the game is also called Black Lady and why so much of the play is manoeuvring to avoid — or deliver — that one card.
Worked examples
An ordinary hand. North takes four hearts. East takes the Queen and two hearts. South takes seven hearts. West takes nothing.
North 4 · East 15 (13 + 2) · South 7 · West 0. Total: 26. ✓
The Queen alone. You take one trick all hand, and it happens to contain the Queen of Spades and nothing else of value.
You score 13 — from a single trick. This is why a player will cheerfully take three hearts to avoid the Queen.
Shooting the moon. South takes every heart and the Queen — all 26 points.
Instead of South scoring 26, each opponent scores 26 and South scores 0. See below for the exception this app applies.
Shooting the moon
Take all thirteen hearts and the Queen of Spades in one hand and the scoring inverts: your three opponents each take 26 points while you take none. It is the game's grand gamble, and it is brutal to attempt — one heart falling to another player and you have simply collected 25 points of garbage with nothing to show for it.
The standard digital convention applies here. If adding +26 to the other three would end the game with the shooter still losing, the moon flips instead to −26 off the shooter's own score. The shooter always receives whichever outcome is better for them, so a successful moon can never backfire.
The defensive lesson matters more than the offensive one: if one player has taken every heart so far, somebody has to take a heart, and it is worth 13 points of damage to be the one who does it. Watch for a player who suddenly starts winning tricks they were ducking earlier.
How the game ends
Hands accumulate. The game ends the moment any player reaches 100 points at the end of a hand — and the player with the lowest total wins. If the lowest scores are tied, further hands are played until the tie breaks.
Because 26 points enter play every hand, a four-player game typically runs eight to twelve hands. A single disaster hand — the Queen plus a handful of hearts — is 15 to 20 points, so roughly a fifth of the way to elimination.
What the scoring tells you to do
- Fear the Queen, not the hearts. Trading three hearts for the Queen is a 10-point profit every time.
- Hold a low spade. If you hold the A♠ or K♠ with no small spades behind them, you will be forced to win the trick the Queen arrives on. Two or three low spades is the cheapest insurance in the game.
- Getting a few hearts is fine. Taking two or three hearts in a hand is an ordinary, survivable result. Players who contort their whole hand to take zero often end up with the Queen.
- Count the hearts played. When you know all thirteen have gone, your remaining high cards are free.
- Watch the leader near 100. Late in a game, dumping points on the player closest to 100 ends the game while you are still ahead.
Common scoring variants
- Jack of Diamonds
- The J♦ scores −10, a bonus card worth chasing. Changes the hand total to 16 net.
- Omnibus Hearts
- Combines the Jack of Diamonds rule with the moon, and the shooter must take the Jack as well.
- Game to 50
- A shorter match. Roughly halves the number of hands.
- New Moon / no moon
- Shooting is disallowed entirely; all 26 points always land on the takers.
The game on this site uses the classic scoring described above — hearts, the Queen, the moon, and a race that ends at 100.
Keep reading
- How to Play Hearts — the complete rules.
- Hearts Strategy — passing, ducking and surviving the Queen.
- Hearts Variants — Omnibus, Black Maria, Spot Hearts and more.
- Shooting the Moon — how to do it and how to stop it.
- Hearts for 3 Players — three-handed rules, 5 and 6 too.