SPOT HEARTS

Hey there! Have you ever played a card game called Spot Hearts? It’s a really fun game for 4 players! The goal is to have the lowest score when one of the players reaches 500 points. Let me explain how it works!

SETUP

First things first, let’s set up the game. The cards will be dealt in a clockwise direction and face down. We’ll have a random player be the first dealer, and then the dealer position will move to the left for each new round. The dealer shuffles the deck and deals each player 13 cards. Are you following along so far?

Now that we have our cards, it’s time to pass some of them around. This is where things get interesting! During the first round, each player will pass three cards from their hand to the player on their left. Then, they’ll receive three cards from the player on their right and add them to their hand. For the second round, the passing direction switches to the right, and for the third round, we’ll be passing cards to the player sitting directly across from us. However, in the fourth round, there’s no passing involved. And then, we start the whole pattern over again.

GAMEPLAY

When it’s time to start playing, the person with the two of clubs goes first. Everyone else must follow along with the same suit if they can. Remember, there are no special trump cards in this version of Hearts. The highest card wins the trick, and the winner starts the next one. If you can’t match the suit, you can play any other card you want. This is a good chance to get rid of any high cards you don’t want to win with. But be careful, because you can’t throw out any hearts or the queen of spades in the very first trick. After that, though, you’re free to play them whenever you can’t follow the suit that’s being led.

One important rule is that you can’t start a trick with a heart until someone has played a heart or the queen of spades. However, the queen of spades can be played at any time during the game.

When playing this game, we keep going until someone reaches a score of 500 points or more.

How do we earn points?

In this game, the goal is to win as few tricks as possible. That means we want to avoid winning any hearts or the queen of spades. After each round, we count up the number of hearts and queen of spades we won and add that to our score. Remember, the aim is to have the lowest score!

The number of points we earn depends on the cards we’ve won. Cards 2 to 10 are worth the number they show. The jack is worth 11 points, the queen is worth 12, the king is worth 13, and the ace is worth 14 points. The queen of spades is the most valuable card, worth 25 points!

When does the game end?

The game comes to an end when a player reaches 500 points or more. Whoever has the lowest score at that point is the winner of the game.