Hearts Score Calculator & Score Sheet
Every heart is a point, the Queen of Spades is thirteen, and the lowest score wins. Add a row each hand and the running totals take care of themselves — free, for a table of 3 to 6.
Score Calculator
It's a tie — lowest score shares the win!
🏁 Someone has reached 100 — the game is over, and the lowest total wins.
Self-check: each hand's row should add up to 26 across the table (barring a moon or a 3- or 5-player kitty). This page forgets it all when you leave — saved games, running totals, and player stats live in the free Meeply app →
Nice game! This page won't remember it.
Refresh and tonight's hands are gone. Meeply keeps every game, every player, every win rate — and scores Hearts hand by hand, with the 100-point finish and lowest-score-wins built in.
How Hearts Scoring Works
One number per player per hand: the penalty points you took. The rest of the game is about making that number as small as possible — or, once in a great while, as large as possible.
1Penalty Cards: Hearts and the Queen of Spades
Hearts is a game you score by losing. Each hand, every heart you take in a trick costs you 1 point and the Queen of Spades costs 13, so there are exactly 26 penalty points on the table every hand - 13 hearts plus the Queen. At the end of a hand, each player counts the penalty cards in their trick pile and enters that number in the row. That's the whole arithmetic: the row for each hand should add up to 26 across the table, which makes a handy self-check when someone's count looks suspicious.
2Passing: Left, Right, Across, Hold
Before play begins, each player passes three cards face-down - and the direction rotates. On the first hand you pass to the player on your left, on the second to the right, on the third to the player sitting opposite, and on the fourth hand nobody passes at all. Then the cycle repeats. Three- and five-player tables adapt the pattern (a common one is left, right, hold), and some groups skip the hold hand entirely - agree before you deal. Passing does not change the scoring; it just decides who inherits your Queen of Spades problem.
3Breaking Hearts
The player holding the 2 of clubs leads it to the first trick, and from there you must follow suit if you can. You may not lead a heart until hearts have been "broken" - that is, until a heart has been played to an earlier trick - unless your hand contains nothing but hearts. That heart-leads-forbidden rule is how nearly everyone plays in the US, though the original rule allowed leading hearts at any time, and some tables also count the Queen of Spades as breaking hearts. A further common variant forbids playing any penalty card on the very first trick. None of this changes what you write down - it just shapes when the pain starts.
4Shooting the Moon
Take every penalty card in a hand - all 13 hearts and the Queen of Spades - and the disaster inverts. Instead of eating 26 points, the shooter either has 26 points subtracted from their own score or chooses to add 26 points to every other player's score; many tables simply play that the shooter scores 0 and everyone else takes 26. Note for the score sheet: a moon hand is the one time the row won't sum to 26 - it'll be -26, or 26 times the number of opponents, depending on which option the shooter takes.
5Reaching 100: Lowest Score Wins
The game continues until one player reaches or exceeds 100 points at the end of a hand - and at that moment, the player with the lowest total wins. Not the player who hit 100; the player who avoided the points all night. If there's a tie for the low score when someone crosses 100, play additional hands until there's a clear winner. This calculator watches for the 100-point line and tells you when the game is over.
Three, Four, Five, or Six Players
Hearts is at its best with exactly four players and a straight 52-card deck, but it stretches. With three, remove the 2 of diamonds so everyone gets 17 cards; with five, remove the 2 of clubs so everyone gets 10, and the holder of the 3 of clubs leads the first trick. Or skip the removals and deal the leftovers face-down as a kitty, taken by whoever wins the first trick (or the first penalty point, if you prefer). However the table is set, the accounting never changes: 26 penalty points per hand, a row per hand on this page, and the lowest total when someone crosses 100 takes the game.
Looking for a Hearts Score Sheet?
If you came here hunting for a Hearts score sheet to print, the calculator above does the same job with the math built in — a row for every hand, more rows whenever you need them, a column per player, and running totals that flag the moment someone hits 100. It forgets everything when you leave, though. For a score sheet that remembers — every game, every player, every hard-won lowest score — Hearts is one of 300+ games in the free Meeply app.
This Page Adds. Meeply Remembers.
A calculator gives you tonight's totals and forgets them. Meeply scores Hearts hand by hand — moon shots included — watches the 100-point line for you, and keeps every game, every player, and every argument about who always gets stuck with the Queen settled with receipts.
Free to try. Hearts is one of 300+ games with rules-aware scoresheets built in.
