Casino Talks

Posted by: Mike Church at January 17, 2005, 6:33 am

Topic: Hearts 41 Forum: Card Chat

I think that, aside from Poker (which is really a class of games rather than a single card game) Hearts may be one of the most aried card games out there-- everyone has their own ariant. Well, here's one I came up with. I warn that this is untested; play at your own risk. However, I doubt I went too far wrong: Hearts is pretty stable as fair as ariation goes.

Hearts 41 is hearts with 41 penalty points in the deck (net of 30, counting bonus cards). The penalty alues are:

Qs: +13
Jo: +8
6h: +6
2c: +2
*h: +1 (excl. 6)
Ad: -2
Kd: -2
Qd: -2
Jd: -5

The reason I changed the diamond suit is because I feel that the Jd is too low in the pecking order to have all the bonus ested in it. You also take the 2d out of the deck, to keep a deck of 52 cards.

The 6 of hearts is just to give some excitement to the otherwise predictable 4-point nature of the heart trick. I like doing funky things to low cards in the pecking order (like my 6c in Ambition) because of the unpredictability they bring in to the game.

The Joker is a bit wacky. Out of suit, it loses (it's not part of any suit.) In the lead, it also loses, and players can pick any suit in which to play. The winner of this awful trick is the person with the highest card of the three, according to rank. Ties are broken by suit as follows: s > h > d > c (Bridge ranking). It leads to a "rat race" in which everyone tries to throw down the absolute lowest card. It can be an absolutely great card to have in the hand. However, if led on the last trick, it wins.

Shooting the moon requires the hearts, joker, and Qs; you don't need the 2c. Speaking of which, there's an additional penal twist to the 2c: you can't shoot if you have the 2c, and you can't get bonuses for diamonds either; if you get all the points, you're stuck with +41. This means that, instead of people playing high clubs to the first trick with impunity, the round starts with some action. Then, it slows down (the rules about "breaking hearts" still apply) for a while and, later, gears up for a climax.

The 2c does not break hearts, and other penalty cards are not admissible on the first trick. The diamonds do not break hearts and are admissible to the first trick.

The Joker can only be played (led or ruffed) if a player is out of hearts and diamonds. (Therefore, the player holding it needs to oid the red suits in order not to get screwed; recall that it wins as a last-trick play.)

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