Online Hearts Game Development

Hearts is an "evasion-type" trick-taking playing card game for four players, although variations can accommodate between three and six players. The game is also known as Black Lady, Black Maria, Black Widow, and Slippery Bitch, though any of these may refer to the similar but differently-scored game Black Lady. The game is a member of the Whist family of trick-taking games (which also includes Bridge and Spades), but the game is unusual among Whist variants in that it is an evasion-type game; players avoid winning certain penalty cards in tricks, usually by avoiding winning tricks altogether.

The basic game of Hearts does not include card passing, but the most common variants do. Before each hand begins, each player chooses three cards, and passes them to another player. The main objectives of passing are to try to become "short" or "void" in a suit, and thus able to play off-suit when that suit is led; or to rid one's hand of "dangerous" cards that will likely force that player to take a trick containing penalty points, such as the Ace, King, or Queen of any suit (especially spades and hearts). There are many variations on passing; the most common (popularized by computer versions) rotates passing through four deals; on the first deal, players pass to the left, the second deal to the right, the third across the table. On the fourth deal no cards are passed; the cycle of four deals is then repeated.

The game is played like most other trick-taking games. The first trick is led by the player to the left of the dealer. Each other player, in clockwise order, then plays a card from their hand. Players must follow suit; that is, play a card of the same suit as the lead card, if they are able. If they are not able to do so, they can play any card (an action known as "sloughing" or "discarding"), including a penalty heart. The trick and any penalty points it contains are won by the player who played the highest-value card of the suit that was led. That player then becomes the lead player for the next trick, and play continues until all players have exhausted their hands.