Hearts

Thirteen tricks, twenty-six points, and every one of them is bad. Pass three cards to the left, duck everything you can, and find somebody else to give the queen of spades to — unless you can take all twenty-six, which hands them to everybody else instead.

How it feels

• Quietly vicious
• Counting cards
• Everyone against whoever is ahead

What the design is for

• 01

  Three cards, four ways

  Left, then right, then across, then the hand where nobody passes at all — and that fourth one is what gives the other three their meaning. Everybody chooses in the same moment and nothing moves until all four are in.

• 02

  The two of clubs leads

  Not the dealer and not the winner of anything: whoever is holding one specific card. The first trick will not take a penalty card either — unless a seat has nothing but points to throw — so the queen and the hearts sit out the opening whether you like it or not.

• 03

  Hearts stay locked until one breaks

  You cannot lead a heart until somebody has been forced to throw one away — and when it happens, the card that did it lies face up on the cloth for the rest of the hand. No caption, no badge: the card.

• 04

  Shooting the moon

  Take all twenty-six and the arithmetic turns inside out: nothing for you, twenty-six for everybody else. Measured, because a rule nobody ever meets is not a rule — a seat that genuinely goes for it lands it in about one hand in twenty against the opponents that defend it, one in three against a table that does not, and takes seventeen points a hand trying, against the table’s four.

• 05

  Five opponents that count

  From one that plays the lowest card it is allowed to and keeps the queen far too long, to one that deals the unseen thirty-nine cards out ninety-six ways before every card it plays — and remembers the three it passed you.

• 06

  One phone, four people

  Round a table it hands over between seats, and nothing of the next hand is drawn until somebody says they are that person. A trick lands as one line everybody reads together, rather than a reveal between every pair of hands.