How to play Broken Hearts in Games by Zaweba

Broken Hearts is the traditional trick-taking game of hearts, and in Games by Zaweba you play it against three computer players. The aim is simple to say and hard to manage: avoid taking hearts, and above all avoid the dreaded queen of spades. It sits on the Cards shelf and you play it entirely with the mouse.

Unlike most card games, nobody is trying to win tricks for their own sake. Every trick is a small risk, and the skill lies in choosing which cards to get rid of and when.

How a hand is played

Each hand begins with a pass. You choose three cards from your hand and pass them on, and you receive three in return. Then come thirteen tricks. The two of clubs leads the first trick, and after that whoever won the last trick leads the next.

You must follow suit if you can. If you have no card of the suit that was led, you may play anything, which is your chance to throw away a dangerous card. Hearts cannot be led until one has been thrown on an earlier trick, so the hearts tend to come out gradually as players run short of other suits.

To choose cards for passing or to play them, you just click them. The game handles the rest.

Points, penalties and shooting the moon

Every heart you take costs you 1 point. The queen of spades costs 13, as much as all the hearts put together. Points are bad, so a quiet hand where you take nothing is a good hand.

There is one way to turn this on its head. If you take every heart and the queen of spades as well, you shoot the moon. The game rewards that bold move instead of punishing it, so a hand that looked like a disaster can become a triumph if you have the cards to finish the job.

Play continues hand after hand until someone reaches 100 points. At that moment the player with the lowest score wins.

Getting better at Broken Hearts

The pass is the first decision of every hand, and it shapes everything that follows. High cards in a suit where you hold few others are the ones that tend to get you into trouble, since you may be forced to win a trick with them. Passing them on lets someone else worry about them. Think too about the queen of spades: holding her with plenty of other spades to protect her is a different matter from holding her almost alone.

During play, keep an eye on which suits each player seems to be out of. When a computer player throws a card off rather than following suit, you know something about their hand. Count the hearts as they fall, too, because knowing how many are left helps you judge whether a trick is safe.

Be careful about shooting the moon. It is tempting when a hand starts well, but you need to take every single heart and the queen. Missing even one leaves you holding a large score. Watch for the computer players attempting it too, and take a single heart yourself if that is what it takes to stop them.

Fitting it into an evening

A full game to 100 can take a while, but each hand is short, so it suits a session where you might be interrupted. If you need to step away, Esc pauses the game, and switching to another window pauses it automatically. F1 brings up the rules if you need a reminder mid-hand.

Broken Hearts is one of the card games in Games by Zaweba where you have opponents rather than a solitary layout, so it makes a good change from the patience games. Your plays, wins and best score are recorded on its tile in the library, so you can see over time how often you finish lowest.