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.)

Comment via: google plus, facebook, substack

Recent posts on blogs I like:

Variable fonts aren't universally supported

I make a lot of webpages. I also use Lockdown Mode on iOS and MacOS for a bit of extra security. Sometimes I realize that I forgot to test on Safari and it looks like crap, or I test and don’t notice that there’s been a problem for months (as was the case…

via Home June 27, 2026

Ozy in Asterisk on coping with AI doom

I wrote an article for Asterisk Magazine about people who believe in AI superintelligence soon, and who are chill about it.

via Thing of Things June 24, 2026

Fiddle Practice

For a while I wasn't learning how to play violin very well because whenever it was time to practice I didn't want to. I didn't really like practicing, because (1) it's boring, (2) I have better things to do, and (3) actually I guess there …

via Anna Wise's Blog Posts May 3, 2026

more     (via openring)