Hearts is a trick-taking card game, most commonly played by four players individually rather than in partnerships, in which the objective is to avoid taking penalty cards, specifically every heart and the queen of spades, over the course of a hand, since penalty points accumulate against the player who takes them. The game belongs to a broader family of evasion or reverse trick-taking games and took its now-standard form in the United States in the late nineteenth century. It has remained widely played as a casual card game and became especially common as a built-in computer game bundled with early Windows operating systems.
Facts
Originating RegionContested and layered: Reversis in eighteenth-century Spain for the trick-avoidance ancestor, the United States in the 1880s for the codified modern game 1 Game TypeCard game, trick-avoidance, member of the Whist group 1 Governing BodyNo governing body; organized informally and through card-game clubs and tournaments, with no single international federation. 1 Classification
Player CountSmall Group (3-6 Players) 1 Sport
Game Type (category) In the Other Atlases
- Also in Geography Atlas: Europe, found in there.
- Also in Geography Atlas: North America, found in there.
Sources
1. Wikipedia, Hearts (card game)
WikipediaLead section, third sentence
The game is a member of the Whist group of trick-taking games (which also includes Bridge and Spades), but is unusual among Whist variants in that it is a trick-avoidance game; players avoid winning certain penalty cards in tricks, usually by avoiding winning tricks altogether.
History section, first and second paragraph
Hearts itself emerged in the United States during the 1880s, The Standard Hoyle of 1887 reporting that it had only been played there for "the last five years" and was "probably of German origin".
Lead section, first sentence
Hearts is an "evasion-type" trick-taking playing card game for four players, although most variations can accommodate between three and six players.
Infobox, players field
3-6, (4 is best)
View the Source Wikidata: Hearts
Wikidata Q867799, class allow-list match (w-wdresolver-0926)View the Source Reader Challenges (0)
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