Four players, sixteen hands, running totals down the page — plus the passing rotation and the shoot-the-moon rule, so the table stops arguing about who passes where.
| Hand | Pass | Player 1 | Player 2 | Player 3 | Player 4 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Left | ||||
| 2 | Right | ||||
| 3 | Across | ||||
| 4 | Hold | ||||
| 5 | Left | ||||
| 6 | Right | ||||
| 7 | Across | ||||
| 8 | Hold | ||||
| 9 | Left | ||||
| 10 | Right | ||||
| 11 | Across | ||||
| 12 | Hold | ||||
| 13 | Left | ||||
| 14 | Right | ||||
| 15 | Across | ||||
| 16 | Hold | ||||
| FINAL | |||||
Hearts is a trick-taking game you play to lose: every heart taken costs a point and the queen of spades costs thirteen, and the low score wins when someone crosses 100. Each hand starts with the pass — three cards to a neighbour on the rotation the sheet lists — then the holder of the 2 of clubs leads the first trick.
Follow suit when you can. Hearts can't be led until one has been discarded on another trick ("breaking hearts"), and on the very first trick no penalty card may be played at all. The one reversal worth knowing before you first get burned by it — shooting the moon — is explained below, or play a hand against the computer and see the whole shape of it.
Hearts is a four-player trick-taking game where you are trying not to win tricks. Points are bad. After each hand, write every player's points for that hand in their column and keep a running total. When any player reaches 100, the game ends and the lowest score wins.
Before each hand, every player passes three cards. The direction rotates, and the sheet's Pass column tracks it for you: left, right, across, then a hold hand where nobody passes. Then it repeats. Forgetting the hold hand is the single most common scoring-table argument in Hearts.
Every heart is worth 1 point and the queen of spades is worth 13, so there are 26 points in every hand. If your four columns do not add to 26 for a hand, something was miscounted — that check is the main reason to write the hand scores rather than only the totals.
If a single player takes all 26 points, they have shot the moon: they score 0 and every other player takes 26. Some groups let the shooter instead subtract 26 from their own total — decide before you deal. It is the only reason to ever chase the queen of spades on purpose.
How many points is the queen of spades in Hearts? 13.
Who wins at Hearts? The player with the lowest total when someone crosses 100.
What order do you pass in? Left, right, across, then no pass — repeating for the whole game.