How to keep score at Hearts

In Hearts every heart taken is a point and the queen of spades is thirteen, and the fewest points wins. Take all twenty-six and you have shot the moon: everybody else takes twenty-six instead. Points that only ever go up are easy to lose track of, and the moon is easy to get wrong.

It needs no account and no signal. The score is kept on this phone, so it survives the screen going dark between deals, and the page opens again where you left it.

1. Write in everybody’s name in the order you sit, going the way the deal passes.
2. Tap Deals beside whoever deals first, or press Pick a dealer and let the phone choose.
3. Set the house rules your table plays, then press Start. The phone remembers the names and the rules for next time.

Four is the game. With three, five or six, take low cards out until the pack deals evenly. The points are the same, so the scorekeeper works the same.

Above every hand the scorekeeper says which way the three cards pass: to the next player, back, across, then a hand with no passing.

When the hand is over, write in the points each player took. They have to add up to twenty-six. A player on twenty-six shot the moon, and the scorekeeper sees it.

Each player adds what they took. On a moon the shooter adds nothing and everybody else adds twenty-six.

The game ends when anybody reaches the target, and the fewest points wins. If two share the fewest, play another hand.

The arithmetic is the code the Hearts tables in this app score with, so the scorekeeper and the game always agree.

Game ends at

100 is the usual game. 50 is a short one.

Passing

Which way the cards pass, for the line above each hand. It changes nothing in the score.

Share board makes a link and a QR code. Everybody who opens it watches the board change as you save each deal, with no account on either side. With no signal it gives a link that carries the board inside it instead, which shows the score as it stood when the link was made.

Send a picture of the board draws the standings and every deal as an image for the family group, with the address in the corner. It needs no signal.

If you have to leave before the game ends, Hand over scoring shows a second code. Whoever scans it keeps score on their own phone from then on.

Pick a dealer chooses who deals first, and from then on the scorekeeper says whose deal it is above every deal. Shuffle seats puts the names in a new order to sit in.

Both draw from the phone’s own random number generator, the one the dice roller uses, so every seat is equally likely.