

If it is your turn to lead and no hearts have been played thus far, you cannot select a heart as the card to play. You may not lead a trick with hearts until hearts has been played on another suit (aka 'broken').Try to avoid these unless you are shooting the moon which we'll touch on later. Any penalty cards (any hearts or queen of spades) the trick are added to the player's penalty score. This means he or she takes the 4 cards on the table and starts the next turn. Once 4 cards have been played, the player who played the highest ranking card takes the trick.

If not, they can play any of their other cards.

The queen of spades is a special card in this game. Play like this continues until all thirteen cards have been played. Hearts are broken when a player cannot follow suit or only has spades left in their hand. To begin with, hearts cannot be played until that suit is broken. Whoever plays the highest heart, or the highest card in the suit led wins the trick. If the player does not have a club, they may lay any card that they want. Since a club was led, the second player must also lay a club if they can. The second player must follow suit if able. This is highly unlikely, but it is possible. If both the two and four of clubs are dead cards, the player with the six of clubs goes first. If neither player has the two of clubs, the player with the four of clubs goes first. When you play Hearts, the player with the two of clubs goes first and must lay that card to the first trick. The remaining card is also dead and placed to the side. Then deal thirteen cards to each player one at a time. This is a dead card, and it will not be used. The heart suit is the trump suit for the game.ĭeal one card to the side. This will leave you with a twenty eight card deck. THE CARDS & THE DEALīegin with a standard fifty two card deck and remove the 3, 5, 7, 9, J, & K from all suits. This two player version makes the game a little more accessible. Sometimes it is difficult to find four players. Although it is played with a heavily modified deck, 2 Player Hearts still captures the overall strategy and enjoyment of the traditional card games. In this game, taking tricks is a bad thing unless you can all of them. Each player is trying to score as few points as possible. Hearts is a fun card game traditionally played with four players, but unlike other trick-taking games you want to avoid winning tricks.

OBJECTIVE OF 2 PLAYER HEARTS: The player with the lowest score at the end of the game wins! NUMBER OF PLAYERS: 2 players NUMBER OF CARDS: 28 card deck RANK OF CARDS: 2 (low) – Ace (high), hearts are always trump TYPE OF GAME: Trick-Taking game AUDIENCE: Adult
