Passing in Hearts

February 12th, 2012
cards, games
In the trick taking card game Hearts you begin each hand by selecting three cards to pass to another player, and then receiving three to replace those. Every four hands you play one without passing, and I find it almost always less fun than the others. I think what's going on is that the players have more ordinary hands. With passing I've had multiple voids, zero points, a ten card suit, and other hands that are really very unlikely to show up on their own.

Passing should improve related games as well: I've tried to convince Bridge players to play with Hearts-style passing, but they see it as silliness.

(I wonder what passing would do to 7 Wonders. You could pass three times, at the beginning of each age. You'd probably pass cards 'upstream' to your potential future hands.)

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