How to Play Hearts With 3 Players

The deal

Fifty-two cards do not divide by three, so one card leaves the deck. The standard choice is the 2 of diamonds: it is the lowest card of a suit that carries no points, it never wins a trick anyone cares about, and removing it leaves the 2 of clubs in play to start the hand. Shuffle the 51 cards and deal them one at a time, so every player holds 17. The deal usually passes to the left after each hand.

Nothing else about the deck changes. All 13 hearts and the Queen of Spades are still in play, so each hand still contains 26 points.

Passing with three players

Before play, each player chooses three cards and passes them face down, as in the four-player game, and looks at the cards received only after passing. The four-player rotation is left, right, across, hold; with three players there is no seat across the table, so tables shorten the cycle. A common arrangement is left, then right, then hold (no pass), repeating every three hands. This is a convention rather than a rule: rotations vary, and some groups pass left every hand or skip the hold hand altogether. Agree on it before the first deal.

The advice on what to pass does not change: the Queen of Spades unless she is well guarded by low spades, bare high spades, high hearts, and the cards that create a void. See the passing guide for the full reasoning.

The first trick

Whoever holds the 2 of clubs after the pass leads it. The other two must follow with a club if they can. The common rule, and the one CardCouch uses in its four-player game, is that no penalty card may be played on the first trick: a player with no clubs discards a diamond or a spade other than the Queen, and may only throw a heart or the Queen if they hold nothing else.

If your table removes the 2 of clubs instead of the 2 of diamonds, the holder of the lowest club (the 3) leads it, and the trick is otherwise played the same way.

What changes in play with three

The rules of play are the standard ones. Follow suit if you can; if you cannot, play anything. The highest card of the suit led wins the trick and leads next. Hearts may not be led until a heart has been played on an earlier trick (only a heart breaks hearts; the Queen of Spades does not, though some tables differ), unless you hold nothing but hearts. The Queen may be led on any trick after the first.

What does change is the feel of the hand. With 17 cards each a hand runs 17 tricks, so there is more time for the Queen to find a home. Each suit is shared among three hands instead of four, so you usually hold more cards of every suit, voids are harder to come by, and the first voids tend to appear later. Expect to follow suit longer than you are used to, and expect the dangerous tricks, where someone discards a heart or the Queen, to cluster towards the end.

Counting is easier, though. With only two other hands, each card that falls tells you more about who holds the rest of the suit, and the Queen can only be in one of two places.

Scoring is unchanged

Each heart taken scores 1 point and the Queen of Spades 13, so a hand still holds 26 points, now divided among three players instead of four. If one player takes all 13 hearts and the Queen, they have shot the moon: by the common scoring they take 0 and each of the two opponents adds 26. Some tables let the shooter subtract 26 instead; that is a variant CardCouch does not offer, so agree on it in advance. The game ends after the hand in which anyone reaches 100, and the lowest total wins. The scoring guide has the details.

Other ways to handle the odd card

Removing the 2 of diamonds is the usual answer, but it is not the only one. Some tables keep all 52 cards, deal 17 each, and set the extra card aside face down as a kitty that goes to the winner of the first trick. The kitty counts as part of that player's tricks, so if it hides a heart or the Queen, those points land on them. This is a variation; it adds a little luck to the opening trick.

CardCouch does not offer three-player Hearts. The game here is the standard four-player one: you against three computer opponents on three difficulty levels, 13 cards each, passing left, right, across and hold, no points on the first trick, game to 100. The play itself is the same, so it is good practice for the three-handed table.