A full 52-card deck is dealt out completely: thirteen cards each, nothing left over. Because every card is in play, all 26 penalty points are somewhere in the four hands, and every one of them lands on somebody before the hand ends.

Before a card is played, each player picks three cards to give away and receives three from another player. The direction rotates: the first hand passes to the left, the second to the right, the third straight across, and the fourth is a hold with no pass at all. Then the two of clubs leads the first trick, wherever it happens to be.

The pass is your one chance to get rid of what you do not want, and everyone is doing it at the same time — so you are choosing blind, and the three cards arriving from your neighbour may be worse than the three you sent.

The queen of spades is the obvious thing to pass, and so are the king and ace of spades behind her: holding a high spade with the queen still out means you can be forced to win the trick she falls on. After that the usual choice is your highest cards, because a high card is the one most likely to be dragged into winning a trick you were trying to duck.

What you generally keep is low cards, especially low hearts. A hand full of twos and threes can duck under almost anything, and low hearts are what let you follow a heart lead without taking the trick.

Whoever holds the two of clubs must lead it to open the hand, so the first trick is never a choice. After that, the player who won the last trick leads the next one.

You must follow the suit that was led if you hold it. Only when you are void in that suit may you play something else, and that is the moment the game turns: an off-suit card cannot win the trick, so it is the one safe time to throw away something you never want to be holding.

There is no trump. A trick is won by the highest card of the led suit and nothing else, which means the ace of spades thrown on a club lead loses to the two of clubs. High cards in a suit you are void in are worthless — and that is good news.

Nobody may lead a heart until hearts have been broken, which happens the first time a heart is played at all — normally when a player who is void in the led suit discards one. Until then, leading is restricted to the other three suits.

The exception is a hand with nothing else in it: if every card you hold is a heart, you may lead one, because a player must always be able to play.

There is one more restriction, and it is the reason no hand is decided on the opening trick: no point card may be played on the first trick at all. Neither a heart nor the queen of spades can be discarded there unless you hold nothing else, so the queen cannot be dumped before anybody has had a chance to react.

Thirteen points in a single card, which is half the hand's total penalty and more than every heart combined. Most hands of Hearts are really about her.

If you hold her, you are looking for a chance to get rid of her: being void in a suit lets you throw her on somebody else's trick, and the pass will do it for you if she arrives early. If you do not hold her, you are trying to make her fall on somebody else — which is why leading spades is a standard tactic once you are safe, since it forces the player holding her to either play her or use up a guard.

The card is the reason high spades are dangerous. The ace and king of spades can win the trick the queen is played into, so holding them while she is unaccounted for is how a careful hand suddenly loses thirteen points.

Taking every single penalty card — all thirteen hearts and the queen of spades — is shooting the moon. Instead of scoring 26, you score nothing and all three opponents take 26 each.

It is the reason a hand that looks lost is still worth playing. If the points are already piling on you, the way out is not to duck harder but to take the rest of them: once you hold most of the penalty cards, letting a single heart escape to somebody else is what turns a triumph into a disaster.

It also means you cannot relax when an opponent is collecting points. Letting a player take a run of hearts unopposed can be far more expensive than taking one trick yourself to break the attempt — winning a single heart is often the cheapest insurance in the game.

At the end of each hand every player adds up the penalty cards they took: one point per heart and thirteen for the queen of spades, so 26 points go on the board every hand unless somebody shot the moon.

Scores accumulate across hands, and the match ends as soon as any player reaches 100. Because points are penalties, the winner is the player with the fewest — so crossing 100 is what ends the match, not what wins it. An exact tie for lowest plays another hand.

Both deal the whole deck to four players and both are played in tricks, which is where the resemblance ends. They are close to mirror images.

Spades has a permanent trump suit, fixed partnerships, and a contract you announce before playing: you say how many tricks you and your partner will take, and then you have to take exactly that many. Taking too many is punished as well as taking too few. Nothing is a penalty card — a trick is simply a trick.

Hearts has no trump and no partner. You bid nothing, you play only for yourself, and specific cards carry the cost. The goal is inverted: you are avoiding tricks rather than claiming them, and there is no partner whose bid you have to read.

The feel differs most in what a high card is worth. In Spades an ace is strength, and in Hearts it is a problem you are trying to shed. If you like Spades for the negotiation with a partner, Hearts will feel more solitary and more evasive — and it has one thing Spades has not got at all, which is the moon: the option to stop avoiding and take everything.