There is no way under the sun that any normal hearts play would have the knowledge of my cards that Microsoft Hearts has. It knows just the card combination to play in order to screw me over with the damn queen of spades. Every. Freaking. Time. I give up Microsoft, you win.
Microsoft Spades cheats as well.
Hoyle Board Games cheats at Pachisi…there’s no way that the computer players will roll a five EVERY time I’m on the one spot where I’ll get smacked back into my pen.
My win rate in MS Hearts is about 60%.
I just played 3 games and finished second, third, first. I wasn’t even counting. I don’t think it cheats.
You just figured this out now? 
Microsoft Hearts? Bah, too predictable. I only feel accomplishment if I can win without taking any points. I’ve had one ‘perfect’ game, where I shot the moon four times in a row to win 0-104-104-104.
Hearts is a very difficult game to play well, so it may be true both that the software cheats and that the human can win easily.
IIRC, the human can “clock” the machine hands in Microsoft Hearts! The machine sorts its hands by suit and rank and then lets you see from where in the hand it draws each card!
Microsoft Hearts passing rules:
- If you have the Queen, pass it.
- If you have a heart that’s an Ace-10, pass it.
After that, they tend to pass the Ace and King of spades, followed by any other Ace. It’s really dumb strategy. I think at some point they do try to short themselves a suit, but it’s rare.
It’s also interesting how the computer players will never try to stop each other from shooting the moon, but as soon as they get a whiff of you trying to do it, they’ll all work in tandem to stop you.
I concur with the OP. After many trials I noticed that if I dump my low cards trying to shoot the moon, I will often get 3 low cards back at a very high rate. When I dump 3 high cards, I rarely get 3 low cards back. Also, if my only spade is K and/or A, the computer will frequently lead the queen even when there are several low spades still to be played. The computer also frequently leads a bad card for me, like if I only have one diamond and it is high, and it has four suits to choose, it will lead a low diamond. I presume they program it to cheat like that to make it challenging where it otherwise wouldn’t be.
I’ve never caught Hearts definitely cheating, but it does bug me that one computer player won’t stop another from shooting the moon. I’ve never caught it deliberately taking points to stop me from doing it, either. I only ever try when I know I can make it.
Don’t get me started on GNU backgammon, though.
Hoyle Pachisi does cheat. When the game first begins, every player must roll one die to determine who goes first. And the percentages prove that you’re more likely to roll a 6 than any other number. Also, the next player after you is more likely to roll a 1. And it’s even trickier than that. It’s more likely to bring out pieces sooner for all other players except you. The odds of you getting kicked back to your pen is extremely high and obvious. Doesn’t matter where you are on the board, the program can and often does roll doubles and triples with high numbers just to get your opponents piece to your position. It also purposefully slows down or speeds up your advancement so that you are force to move other pieces before other opponents are forced to move their pieces, for example, breaking up an opponents two piece block. When you’ve played the real game with real players tossing real dice and then play Hoyle’s Pachisi, it’s beyond obvious that Holye Pachisi was programmed to cheat to win. SHAME ON YOU HOYLE!!! You should burn in hell for this. Perhaps you should put two check boxes in your game options. One for “Honest Play” and another for “Allow Hoyle to cheat”. I urge everyone never purchase a Hoyle product again until Hoyle issues a public confession and vows never to design a game that cheats. Is there anywhere in a Hoyle software game that specifically states that “Our games are designed for Honest Play”???
I’ve also done that - 4th time round is tricky with the nae passing rule. XP hearts though? Think the newer versions are a bit tougher as there’s obv no way one should be shooting the moon with such impugnity.
I play Backgammon NJ on my iPhone, and I believe it’s based on GNU backgammon. It plays a mean game and it can feel like it’s cheating, but I have no reason to believe so as I encounter similar streaks in real life games, and the program stores stats for all the games it’s played, and nothing looks weird. I think it’s 100% fair. It’s just very good. I don’t know how much backgammon you play, but it’s got a lot of strategy. A good player should beat an inferior one something like 75% of the time I would say.
I doubt it cheats either, but you only need two dodgy rolls to win, one to force you to leave a piece exposed, and one to nail it. If it’s done at a critical time there may be no recovery.
NJ doesn’t cheat. It even gives you the tools to cheat it instead, if you so wish. You can take the seed value that the game is using and determine the next X dice rolls if you’d like. No matter the board positions, those are the rolls that will happen. Feel free to try it out, whether to cheat the game or just establish that it is actually using the rolls it is supposed to use.
What is does do is play pretty well, but instead of worrying about it cheating, I’ve used that to improve my game drastically. In fact, I now have a winning record at Expert level, all thanks to getting my ass kicked for the first few months.
That’s right. I totally forgot about that. It really is the most brilliant backgammon game I’ve ever encountered. Honest to a fault.
I’m a bridge teacher and good club standard, so I can keep track of all the cards in Hearts too.
I don’t think the program cheats, since I always win. 
Hearts is a tricky game, but it helps if:
- you can remember which cards have gone
- you can identify ‘safe’ and ‘dangerous’ holdings in each suit
Sure you do.
I suppose you have learned how to defend yourself against when the holder of the QS is void in something (usually diamonds), you have the 4 and the other players have the 2 and 3.
Perhaps you have also learned to never pass the A-K spades when you know the Q is going to be passed to you because the more spades in your hand the better.
Likely you have also learned to defend against being dealt a bare QS on a hold hand, you pass it and now you have the A or K with no protectors.
I assume you have a workable defense for the times when you have the QS with 5 protectors and one of the bots has all of the other 7 spades.
And of course you have learned to recognize that just because you have AKQJ98 hearts, a couple small hearts and loads of power in other suits doesn’t mean you can shoot the moon because one of the bots has 5 hearts and one of them is the 10.
And last and perhaps most-importantly I guess it’s a given that you can defeat the bots when they trade cards after the passing phase.
I salute you, Sir.