Hearts is trick-taking played in reverse. In most games of this family, the side that hauls in tricks celebrates; in Hearts, a captured trick is only safe if nothing painful is buried inside it. Each of the thirteen hearts costs one penalty point, the queen of spades costs thirteen on her own, and that puts exactly 26 penalty points into every deal. Whoever accumulates the fewest of them is winning — restraint, not conquest, decides the table.
This Hearts online game gives you the full four-player experience with nothing between you and the cards: no account, no download, no timer. You sit South against West, North, and East, three AI opponents whose skill you can set to easy, medium, or hard. The 2 of clubs opens every hand, everyone must follow the led suit while they can, hearts stay locked as a lead until one has been discarded elsewhere, and the opening trick refuses point cards whenever a safe play exists.
A single hand is only the first layer. Scores carry forward from deal to deal, and the match ends the moment any player crosses 100 points — at which point the lowest total, not the survivor, takes the game. That structure changes how good players think: taking four points in a hand you cannot win cleanly is fine; taking the queen when you sit at 92 is a disaster. The scoreboard above the table tracks every hand so you always know how much room you have left.
Then there is the moon. Take all thirteen hearts and the queen of spades in one hand and, instead of drowning in 26 points, you hand 26 to each opponent — a 78-point swing that can rescue a lost match in a single deal. It is the riskiest play in the game, because collecting 25 of the 26 leaves you with a ruined score and nothing to show for it. Our shoot-the-moon guide breaks down which hands justify the attempt.
Start with the rules page for setup, legal plays, and worked scoring examples, then move to the strategy guide for safe leads, void-building, and point counting. When you play with a physical deck, the Hearts score calculator on this site validates each hand's 26 points and tracks every player's running total toward 100 for you.