Hearts Poker Card Game Offline

Hearts Card game offline 2024 casino poker is a playing card game for four players, although most variations can accommodate between three and six players. It was first recorded in America in the 1880s and has many variants, some of which are also referred to as "Hearts", especially the games of Black Lady and Black Maria. The game is a member of the Whist group of trick-taking games (which also includes Bridge and Spades), but is unusual among Whist variants in that it is a trick-avoidance game; players avoid winning certain penalty cards in tricks, usually by avoiding winning tricks altogether. The original game of Hearts is still current but has been overtaken in popularity by Black Lady in the United States and Black Maria in Great Britain.

The game of Hearts probably originated with Reversis, which became popular around 1750 in Spain. In this game, a penalty point was awarded for each trick won, plus additional points for taking J♥ or Q♥ in tricks. A similar game called "Four Jacks" centered around avoiding any trick containing a Jack, which was worth one penalty point, and J♠ worth two.

Hearts itself emerged in the United States during the 1880s, The Standard Hoyle of 1887 reporting that it had only been played there for "the last five years" and was "probably of German origin". It described Hearts as "a most pleasant game, highly provocative of laughter". It was a no-trump, trick-taking game for four players using a full pack of cards, the aim being to avoid taking any hearts in tricks. The basic format has changed little since. Two scoring variants were mentioned under the name 'Double or Eagle Game'. The first was the precursor to Spot Hearts whereby the cards of the heart suit cost the following in chips: Ace 14, King 13, Queen 12, Jack 11, and Pip cards at their face value. The second scoring scheme was: Ace 5, King 4, Queen 3, Jack 2, and all pips 1 chip each.

In 1909, the Q♠ was added as the highest penalty card in a variant called Discard Hearts, after the new feature of passing unwanted cards to other players after the deal, or Black Lady, after the nickname for the Q♠. This new variant has since become the standard game of the Hearts group in America where it is often, somewhat confusingly, also called "Hearts". To begin with, Black Lady did not have the option of "shooting the moon"; that came later.

In the 1920s, the J♦ variation (ten positive points) was introduced, and sometime later the scoring was reversed so that penalty points were expressed as positive instead of negative.

The slam is known as "Shooting the Moon" and first appeared in Britain in 1939 in a variant of Hearts called Hitting the Moon. Today this feature is a common element of modern Black Lady.

Meanwhile, in Britain the game of Black Maria, with its additional penalty cards in the suit of spades, emerged in 1939 and, both it and another offshoot, Omnibus Hearts, are "sufficiently different and popular to justify descriptions as separate games

There are two scoring variants known as the Double Game of Hearts (or Eagle Game of Hearts): Auction Hearts, Black Jack Not to be confused with Blackjack. Black Lady or Black Maria, Cancellation Hearts, Chasse Coeur,
Domino Hearts. Greek Hearts is a name given to at least three different variants. Heartsette is another very early variant that is still played. Joker Hearts is recorded as early as 1897 One or more Jokers are added. Omnibus Hearts was "rapidly becoming the most popular of Hearts games" Omnibus Hearts is a variant of Black Lady. Partnership Hearts: A recent variant to enable players to play in partnership. There are three versions of Partnership Hearts. the game is played as in Omnibus Hearts with no partnerships. Spot Hearts appears as a variant in the very first description of Hearts in 1887, albeit referred to as the Double Game of Hearts or the Eagle Game of Hearts,