Help is organized in the following sections.
You have come to the right place. We have created some simplified rules to get you started. With these rules, all you need to know is that the highest card of the suit lead wins the trick, each heart taken is 1 point against you, the first player to capture 100 points loses, and the player with the lowest points wins. If are unfamiliar with trick-based card games, please skim the standard hearts rules section. To begin, from the main game screen for hearts rules, select "Simplified" (at the very top of the list), set the computer level to level 1, and start playing!
Hearts is a four player game played with a standard deck of 52 playing cards. The play is broken down into hands. Hands are played until the game is over. Each player starts with a total score of zero points, points are accumulated each hand and are added to each player's total score. When at least one player's total score reaches 100 points, the game is over and the player with the lowest total score wins.
Each hand consists of four stages: dealing, passing, playing, and scoring.
In the deal stage, the cards are dealt face down evenly to all players, giving each player 13 cards.
In the pass stage, there are four different pass directions that alternate in sequence as hands are played: left, right, across, and hold. The pass direction of the first hand is left, the second hand is right, the third hand is across, and the forth hand is hold. The fifth hand starts over again with left and the sequence repeats. When the pass direction is left, right, or across, players choose three cards from their hand to pass to the player to their left, right, or across direction respectively. After choosing three cards to pass, players will receive three cards from the player at their right, left, or across direction respectively. When the pass direction is hold, players keep their cards as is without passing. Next, the hand continues to the play stage.
The play stage consists of thirteen tricks. A trick consists of four cards, one card from each player. For each trick, there is a leader, a suit lead, and a winner. The leader is the player who played the first card, the suit lead is the suit of the card played by the leader, and the winner of the trick is the highest card played of the suit lead.
The player with the two of clubs in hand begins the play stage. He places the two of clubs on the table face up. This is the first card of the first trick. Play continues clockwise to his left with each player playing a card in turn. Players must play the suit lead if they have it. If they do not have the suit lead, they can play any card, with the exception that a positive point card (point cards discussed later) cannot be played on the first trick.
After each player has played a card on the trick, the player with the highest card of the suit lead takes the trick and places it aside until the scoring stage. This player is the leader of the next trick. For the lead of the next trick, any card in the player's hand can be chosen except for a heart. Hearts are special and cannot be lead until hearts have been "broken". Hearts are broken by someone playing a point card when not leading (or by playing the queen of spades). After some positive point card has been played, hearts can be lead just like any other suit.
The play stage continues until players have no cards left in their hands. Next, the scoring stage begins.
In the scoring stage, players look at the tricks they have taken, count the points in these tricks, and total the points that each player has captured. The points are counted as follows: one for each card of the hearts suit, and 13 for the queen of spades. All other cards are worth zero points. There are a total of 26 points.
Player's total scores are now updated. If one player has 26 points for the hand, he has taken all the point cards, and has successfully "shot the moon" (also known as "running"). This player gets zero for this hand and the other three players each add 26 points to their total scores. If no one has shot the moon then the points taken for this hand are added directly to each player's total score.
If the game is not over (did a player reach 100 points?) then another hand is dealt and the game continues.
NeuralPlay computer players (also known as bots) currently offer five levels of play. Play at level one is reasonably easy and good for beginners. Play at level four or five are should be challenging for most players. For quick play, we recommend playing the "Standard" or "Jack of diamonds" rules with the level three setting.
Why is level three quick for the Standard and Jack of Diamonds settings? There are actually two different computer players provided with NeuralPlay's Hearts, let us call them: QuickBot and ThinkingBot.
QuickBot as its name implies is quick. QuickBot does not think, rather QuickBot follows some basic rules to play hearts reasonably well. QuickBot plays at only one skill level and only knows how to play two hearts variants: Standard and Jack of Diamonds.
ThinkingBot is NeuralPlay's main, robust, general hearts computer player. ThinkingBot can play all variants of hearts and can play at all levels. Give ThinkingBot more time to think and play is better. Less time and play is worse.
ThinkingBot, given time plays better than QuickBot. Ideally, we would provide ThinkgBot at all levels for all hearts variants. However, there are some impatient players (like me), in which case QuickBot is desirable. Thus, we have set the levels and computer players as follows.
You don't like hold hands? You prefer that the left of the dealer leads? Or, perhaps you would rather pass across to partner all the time when playing team hearts?
Select your own hearts variant with the custom rule settings. From the main page, select "Custom" for the hearts rules. By default, the custom rules are set to standard hearts rules. From settings, select your favorite game rules.
The configurable rules options are described here.The computer is performing a search for the best move. This takes a lot of processing power (for a phone). The workaround is to play Standard or Jack of diamonds rules on level 3. All other levels and settings employ a computer player that thinks carefully. We are currently working on a faster computer players.
When you have all high cards in your hand you can claim to speed up play. The computers will verify that you are correct and deny your claim if you are not correct. The computers will also claim when they have all high cards. You will be given the option to accept or deny. The hand of a player who claims is exposed to the other players so they can verify the claim. You will find the claim option by pressing the menu button.
Press the menu button from the Main screen and choose reset. This will reset all settings back to the original shipping defaults.