How to Win My Heart (Hearts (PC))

Member Name: danradders

Product:	Hearts (PC)
Date:	08/09/01 (119 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: easy to learn, free

Disadvantages: hard to master, need four players unless on net

Hearts. When you are sad and lonely you start doing things that entertain you. (no comments thanks) Hearts tries to do this. How it works is that, there are four players involved (must be four really) and they are all dealt thirteen cards of the playing pack. There are four main rounds which are on a continuous repeated circle.

In the first round you pass three of your thirteen cards to the left.
The second round sees you passing three to the right.
The third sees you passing them to the player opposite you.
The fourth sees no passing, you keep all your cards.
The fifth is a repeat of the first, the sixth a repeat of the second round etc.

The game stops when a player reaches one-hundred points, more about this later.

Basically, when you have your thirteen cards, the starting player of each round is defined by s/he who has the two of clubs. Everybody else must then lay (usually played in a clockwise direction) a club, and the person with the highest card wins that lay, and must then lay another card. This is done until all the cards have been used (i.e. thirteen lays have taken place) and then points are counted. (More on this in a bit) You must lay a card of the same suit as the starting player, and the starting player cannot start with a heart unless somebody has laid a heart on another suit due to them not having any cards of this suit. Not an easy concept to explain!

After all the cards have been laid, the points are added up as I said earlier. There are twenty-six points on offer, thirteen for the Queen of Spades, and one point for each of the thirteen hearts. The points system is perhaps slightly different to other games, as you do NOT want to gain the cards mentioned unless you want to "shoot the moon" by winning all of these fourteen cards, hence giving twenty-six points to all other players. The points are added up by the computer and are shown at the end of every round. If you are playing manuall
y (as I have done many times at school in Year Ten when bored out my brain!) then you will need to keep a pen and paper handy to keep a note of the cumulative scores of each player.

Right, how to win. I am by no means an expert, but I can usually beat the computer if I concentrate hard enough. Firstly, think about which cards you are going to pass. If you have a lot of high cards and few low cards then you may wish to consider keeping the high cards, disposing of the low cards and try and obtain all of the points cards. Shooting the moon can only really be done when you have either no low hearts, or low hearts backed up with plenty of high hearts. If you are a beginner, I would suggest that you try and get rid of all your high cards and to try not to shoot the moon until you develop your own little skills you think work, and then have a go at it.

One very popular move is to try and pass all of the cards you have of one suit. If you have one, two or three cards of one suit, clearing that suit out and hoping that you do not get any or just one of that suit of the cards that are passed to you, will enable you to play some other high cards of a different suit, when the suit you cleared out is played. This is a great move if you have, for example just one high heart, because, as soon as hearts is ‘broken’ by you, you know that you have do not have the worry of playing a high heart and getting points.

Tactical points playing is something I have tried to incorporate in recent times. By this I mean, if one player a considerable lead, or is close to you when you are in the lead, try and deliberately give this person points. This can be done by either breaking hearts on them, or retaining the Queen of Spades and giving it to them when you know they will win the hand. This can be a dodgy move though. If you are dealt the Queen of Spades, it is advisable to pass it on, likewise with the King and Ace of Spades as these are two cards which
are more likely to win the Queen. When keeping the Queen, make sure that you have plenty of other spades to back it up, or it could be ‘drawn out’ by other players. This is a good tactic if you do not have the Queen, as it means that you will not be open to receive the Queen later in that hand. A general rule is to always keep your Spades with a value below the Queen in case it is passed onto you, or the King or Ace of Spades is passed onto you.

Another handy tip is to play the high cards first. This means that the player with the Queen will be more likely to not play the Queen on you as they have more cards. I usually take control of the game and play some high cards first, not too many of one suit, maybe two maximum, and then once some high cards are gone, lay a lower card and let somebody else take control.

One short tip: Keep an eye on which cards are played, and as to whether anyone else is going to shoot, (The moon!) and just so you know if your cards are the highest around so you can prepare yourself.

I could give you loads of other little tips that I have, but everyone looks at the game differently, where some prefer to play in the background, others like to get stuck in and try and run the game.

The game is also available on the internet. I have Windows ME and there is a link to Internet Hearts. You simply have to be online, then click on the link. The computer will automatically find three other players for you to play with. If a player leaves then the computer/internet automatically takes over. You can send little messages also which can be quite fun.

Hearts does come as standard on most computers, and only takes up a small amount of hard drive (0.2MB or something small) and the internet version comes with newer windows editions. You can change the names of the other players (i.e. to Tom, Dick and Harry like I have) to whatever you choose, and you can change the speed of the cards on three levels:
Slow, normal and fast. These are the only real options, as well as choosing whether you have sound or not.

Overall an easy game to play, a hard game to master. You may get frustrated at first because you are beaten by the cunning computer, but you will soon get the hang of it and compete better. It is worth a try when you are bored and do not have anything else much to do, although after a while you may get bored with it. This is the main disadvantage really, but the game still gets full marks in my book because it is simple and free.

Ta

DAN

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