Hearts falls in the category of Playing Card Games under the broader category of Indoor Party Games which is designed for 4 players to play though there is flexibility to extend it to both sides accommodating 3-6 players.

The game is played with a standard deck of 52 playing cards in which each player tries to score as few points as one can making it an evasion type game. The format of the game is that of taking tricks, and if the trick taken consists of any title suit or the queen of spade, points are assigned to the winner of the trick. There is no provision of trumps in the game.

Though the game has earned good popularity in live parties of playing card games where indoor party games are much in demand, yet the major role has been played by its Microsoft version packaged with Windows 3.1, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows XP and Windows Vista operating systems. Internet gaming sites have also been a reason to its being phenomenally popular as the game stands today.

13 cards each are dealt to the 4 players. All of them take out 3 cards from their hands and pass them on to the player on their right simultaneously, to keep. The player to the left leads the first trick with the rest of the players playing a card in turn clockwise, following suit when available, and otherwise playing any card which may include a penalty Heart or the queen of spade. The player with the highest card of the led suit takes the trick along with all the penalty cards the trick contains, and then leads the next trick.

The number of hearts you win slap as many penalty points on you whereas one single queen of spade slaps you with 13 of them alone making the highest possible penalty score to be 26 in a deal. The game is declared over as and when any of the players reaches 100 penalty points usually though other variants are in vogue as well.

The winner is the one who scored the least!

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