3, 4 or 5 Players
Hearts works at three, four or five players. The four-handed game is the standard one; the other two need a small adjustment to the deck so it divides evenly, and a shorter or longer passing rotation.
Pick the number of seats when you create a table. Everything else — following suit, the hearts-broken rule, the first-trick restriction, shooting the moon, the end score — is unchanged.
The deck
Section titled “The deck”The deck has to divide evenly among the players, so the odd-numbered games remove a card or two:
| Players | Cards removed | Deck | Each player gets | Tricks per hand |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 3 | 2 | 51 | 17 | 17 |
| 4 | none | 52 | 13 | 13 |
| 5 | 2 and 2 | 50 | 10 | 10 |
The removed cards are always worthless ones — never a heart, never the queen of spades. That matters more than it looks: it means 26 points are on the table every hand at every table size, so scoring, shooting the moon and the end score all behave identically whether you’re playing three-handed or five-handed. No mental arithmetic changes.
If you’d rather keep every card live, Frank’s Way replaces this removal: it deals the full 52-card deck and sets the same number of random cards aside as a hidden kitty, which the winner of the first trick collects and everybody sees at scoring.
Who leads
Section titled “Who leads”Normally the holder of the 2 must lead it to the first trick. The five-handed game removes the 2 from the deck, so the 3 leads instead. Three- and four-handed still lead the 2 (the three-handed game removes the 2, which is not a club).
(With Frank’s Way on, nothing is removed, so the 2 leads unless it happens to be in the kitty — see that page.)
Passing
Section titled “Passing”The pass is always 3 cards, chosen simultaneously. What changes is the rotation, which is always as long as the table is wide — so every player has passed to every other player exactly once before a hold hand comes back around.
| Hand | 3 players | 4 players | 5 players |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | left | left | left |
| 2 | right | right | right |
| 3 | hold | across | two seats left |
| 4 | left | hold | two seats right |
| 5 | right | left | hold |
| 6 | hold | right | left |
“Across” only exists at an even number of seats, so the three-handed game drops it and the five-handed game replaces it with the two longer passes.
How it plays differently
Section titled “How it plays differently”- Three-handed deals 17 cards each, so hands are long and you have far more control over the shape of your hand. Hearts break later, and a moon shot only costs two opponents 26 each — the cheapest version of the shot, and the easiest to see coming.
- Five-handed deals only 10 cards each, so hands are short and swingy. There’s much less information about who holds what, the queen of spades is harder to flush out, and a successful moon hands 26 points to four opponents at once — the most punishing version.
Matchmaking
Section titled “Matchmaking”Quick Play matches you at the count you picked. Each size queues separately, so choosing three players puts you with other people who chose three — you’ll never be dropped into a four-player table you didn’t ask for. The trade-off is that the four-player queue is the busiest one, so an unusual size can take longer to fill. You can always add bots to start immediately.
Three- and five-handed tables also show up in the public game browser, and can be shared directly by invite link, code or QR.
Club tournaments are four-player. Round planning groups entrants into tables of four, so a tournament always runs the standard game whatever its club plays casually.
Rated games work normally at every table size: Elo still moves as long as every seat is a signed-in human and no custom house rules are applied.