Jack of Diamonds (-10)
Standard Hearts gives you nothing but ways to lose. Every scoring card is a penalty, and the whole game is spent trying to hand them to somebody else. The Jack of Diamonds variant adds the one card you actually want: whoever wins the trick containing the J has 10 points subtracted from their score for that hand.
It is one of the most widely played Hearts variants, and it changes the feel of the game more than a single card has any right to.
The rule
Section titled “The rule”Score the hand exactly as you normally would. Then, separately, find the J and give -10 to the player who took the trick it fell in.
Two details matter and are easy to get wrong:
- It goes to whoever won the trick, not whoever played the card. Dropping the J on a trick somebody else takes is a gift of 10 points to an opponent.
- The J is not part of the 26-point count. It is worth 0 the way any other diamond is worth 0. The -10 is a separate bonus layered on top of normal scoring, not a re-labelling of an existing penalty card.
That second point has a tidy consequence: with this rule on, a hand no longer nets 26 points across the table. It nets 16.
Worked example
Section titled “Worked example”Four players, one hand. Seat B wins a middling diamond trick that happens to contain the jack.
| Seat | Hearts taken | Queen of spades | Won the J trick | Hand score |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A | 3 | no | no | 3 |
| B | 0 | no | yes | 0 - 10 = -10 |
| C | 4 | yes | no | 4 + 13 = 17 |
| D | 6 | no | no | 6 |
The four hand scores add up to 16, not 26. Seat B’s total actually went down, which is something that can never happen in the base game.
Shooting the moon
Section titled “Shooting the moon”The J does not count toward shooting the moon. A moon shot is still exactly what it always was: all 13 hearts and the queen of spades, taken by one player.
The bonus is applied independently, and it is applied after the moon transform. So if you shoot the moon and you also took the J along the way, everyone else takes their 26 and you score -10 for the hand rather than 0. Conversely, a player who shoots the moon without the J scores 0 as usual, and whoever did take the jack still gets their -10.
Why games run to 75
Section titled “Why games run to 75”Because scores move down as well as up, hands push players toward the finish line more slowly than they otherwise would. A table playing to 100 with this rule on will sit through noticeably more hands than a table playing standard Hearts to 100.
For that reason the Jack of Diamonds ruleset plays to 75 by default rather than 100. You can override it: pick a Play to 50 / 75 / 100 / 150 variant alongside it and your chosen number wins.
How it changes play
Section titled “How it changes play”The J turns diamonds from the throwaway suit into a suit worth thinking about.
- Diamond tricks are suddenly worth winning. In standard Hearts a diamond trick is dead weight and you duck it without a thought. Here, any diamond trick might be carrying 10 points in your favour, so playing a high diamond stops being a waste.
- Leading the jack yourself is a real gamble. If anyone still holds a higher diamond, you have handed them the bonus. Leading it works when the ace, king and queen of diamonds are all gone, or when you are confident they sit with players who are out of the suit.
- Holding it too long is the other trap. Nurse the J until the last few tricks and you may be forced to discard it, or forced to play it under somebody else’s winner, on a hand where you have run out of diamonds to protect it with.
- Passing is harder. Passing the J away hands an opponent a 10-point swing. Passing high diamonds away means giving up your ability to win the trick it lands in. Many players keep both, which crowds out the low spades and hearts they would normally be shedding.
The bots in the app play this rule properly rather than treating diamonds as filler: with the variant active they will chase the jack, and they know better than to lead it into a table that can still overtake it.
Combining it with other variants
Section titled “Combining it with other variants”- Frank’s Way (three- and five-handed): if the J ends up in the hidden kitty, its -10 goes to whoever collected the kitty, revealed when the hand is scored.
- 3, 4 or 5 players: the J is never one of the cards removed for an odd-numbered table, so the rule works at every table size.
- Play to 50 / 75 / 100 / 150: overrides the default 75, as described above.
Jack of Diamonds is a built-in variant, so games using it are still rated.