Each to their own, but in my experience Hearts w/o the Jack is boring. It reduces the game to a mono-strategy: don’t take tricks, tricks have points in 'em. (The sole strategy-exception being running hearts, also called by some barbarians “shooting the moon”, but if the standard strategy is “don’t take tricks” it becomes pretty obvious when someone is trying to take 'em all)
With the Jack in the game there’s a nice tension between taking tricks putting you at risk of accumulating points and positioning you to trap the Jack. Diamonds ceases to be just another nothin-happening suit like clubs — high diamongs in particular become a double-edged sword and tossing out a low diamond to ditch the lead can constitute an invite to the Jack-holder to deposit said Jack in the holder’s pile.
But if you think you can pompously pontificate in the other direction, go ahead and give it a try
I was playing regularly at my local club a few years ago. I am 34. My regular partner was the best part of 50 years my senior. I would play now except I don’t have a partner. I am also a little turned off by the way a lot of if not most bridge players take the whole thing very seriously. It can be quite tense. Online bridge is no exception here either. If anything, its worse online where people can be total jackasses to you anonymously.
I like bridge, played it in college, and haven’t really played it since because you have to get four fairly congenial people together–or else go to a bridge club where yes, they do take it rather seriously.
I tried online and it just didn’t make sense to me. I couldn’t do online hearts, either. I need some tactile reminder of what I’ve played, apparently, and if you’re leading then what other people play goes by way too fast.
Eh, if we all adopted that wussy philosophy, what an earth would we argue about?
Well, yes and no. There are several limiting factors on that strategy:
(1) As you pointed out, shooting the moon. If someone is doing it well, by the time you know it’s happening, it’s too late to stop. A good moon shot hand is one which has 4 or 5 questionable tricks at the beginning of the hand, and then a long suit that can just be laid down, and preferrably no hearts (because you passed them away) (you do play with passing, right?). For instance, TK of spades, AT3 of diamonds, KQJTxxxx of clubs. That is a bit weird distribution, sure, but after passing, it’s entirely possible. So in the first 4 tricks, that person will have played the T of spades, T and 3 of diamonds, and a low club, totally unalarming, and then WHAM moonshot. A frequent strategy for stopping moonshots, of course, is passing that player a medium to low heart. So what if someone is playing random cards, then takes a trick with the heart (or queen of spades) on it, and then leads the 9 of hearts. Do you take it? It’s 4 points, it’s bad, it puts you in the lead, but if you don’t, that could easily be his only heart, and he’s about to claim the rest.
(2) It’s not always easy to take zero tricks. For instance, what if your hand is:
A7 of clubs, A4 of hearts, AQT of diamonds, AKQJ73 of spades (that’s a bit exaggerated). What’s the right way to play that hand? With the 4 of hearts, it’s very very unlikely that you’ll get to shoot the moon. So how do you play the hand. If you just try to stay out of the lead, you’re going to get clobbered eventually, because you have so many high cards in so many suits. But you do have one huge advantage, which is that you have the Q of spades, and hearts is all about not taking the Q of spades. So what you do is get into the lead, take all of your high cards, take all the spades until everyone else is out of spades, then play the A of hearts, and THEN play the 4 of hearts. At that point, if everyone is just being a wimp, they may have tossed enough hearts that you can then take all your good spades and moon. And at that point, if someone does take the heart, then you’re in great shape. Sure, you took 8 or 9 or 10 points, but it’s a lot better than the 21 or so you would have taken if you had just tried (unsuccessfully) to duck everything.
Sure, if you have a hand which you look at and say “I can take zero tricks”, you probably should take zero tricks. But the skill in hearts, and what adds up in the long run, is how you play the OTHER hands.
(3) The most important point of all, however, and the thing that makes Hearts as fun as it is, is the concept of going after the low man. It’s very important (imho) to play Hearts with 1 winner and 3 losers. That is, if the final score is 100 to 50 to 15 to 10, the guy with 15 lost just as much as the guy with 100. Therefore, anyone who is not currently winning MUST devote all their effort to screwing whoever is currently winning. If you’re in second place, and just coast along trying to avoid tridcks, you’ll end up in second place, as a LOSER. Therefore, and this is the heart and soul of hearts, as long as there’s a clear low man, hearts is always a 3-on-1 game. Sure, the low man can TRY to take no tricks, but with the other 3 players constantly probing him for weaknesses, cooperating with each other, etc., that is much harder said than done. Nothing is more satisfying than correctly sussing out that the low man has a weakness in clubs, and that the guy to his right has the queen and a club void, and leading three straight club tricks through him, knowing that the other guy will hold off the queen, and the low man finally has to play a high club and gets spanked. After which, of course, he is NOT the low man, and then he teams up with you against the new low man. Or, heck, teams up against you if you’re the low man.
Once you start thinking that way, all sorts of new strategies open up. For instance, the first thing you usually need to figure out during a hand of hearts is where the queen is. If the low man has it, then you want to lead spades. If anyone else has it, then you do NOT want to lead spades. So what if the low man starts leading spades. Usually that means that he does not have it, so don’t lead spades. But what that’s what he WANTS you to think? Etc.
Another interesting thing this adds to the game is that when the lead is close, it’s VERY easy for the people in the back of the pack to moon, because the leaders can’t afford to take the points to stop him. This adds a way for people to get back in the game. But of course, there’s still never a guarantee.
Anyhow, my point is, that is why hearts is not just take-no-tricks-boring
Several other arguments against playing with the Jack:
(1) With no jack, the total number of points in a hand is 26, or an average of 6.5 points per person per hand. This means that you can actually get out there and mix it up and take heart tricks to stop people from mooning, or take a few hearts while getting rid of bad cards in your hand, and still be doing well. With the jack, there is an average of only 4 points per person per hand, so the moment you’ve taken one heart trick, you’re already not beating the average for that hand. Hearts needs to have some play room.
(2) With good players, games with the Jack take FOREVER. Not only does the score, on average, increase slower, but if someone gets up high early, it’s quite easy for that person to slide back down again, particularly if some of the players are willing to let that player have the Jack.
(3) No matter how good you are at cards, who ends up with the jack is often TOTALLY arbitrary. Sometimes you can cleverly endplay it, ie, bleed out the queen, then duck some heart tricks, then claim the remaining 6 tricks for a total of -7. But sometimes someone just randomly has it, has diamonds led up to them, and whee.
(4) It decreases the punishment for attempting a moon. In normal hearts, if you come close but fail, that’s 24 or so. With the Jack, if you come close and fail, you usually at least end up gettnig the Jack, so it’s only 14 or 15.
(5) It means that people overwhelmingly pass clubs. Spades and hearts are usually not passed (barring a hand where you have 3 middle hearts with no low ones). It’s much less likely that you’ll pass diamonds, because low ones are good because they’re low, and high ones are good for taking the jack. So hey, 60% of the time, people just try to void themselves in clubs, whoopee. There ought to be at least two plain old normal suits in which you can play around and try to set thigns up.
I’m in my mid 40s and have never in my life seen first hand a game of bridge or ever known anyone younger than my Mom (now 72) who claims to know how to play or has ever even tried it, much less does it regularly.
My MIL (age 79) still plays regularly, and she laments that nobody much under 70 plays; she’s seen 3 clubs in her senior-heavy town fall apart because they simply all died off. Her current club is on the verge now.
Yes, I’ve seen the columns in the paper and read the various posters here, etc., but as to actual first-hand or personal IRL second-hand experience … never except for oldsters.
I imagine some of my friends an acquaintances over the years tried it at least once but never mentioned it, but it can’t be more than a handful of them.
Reading the recent posts I see I’m in a minority, but I’m far from alone. As far as I can tell, bridge will be 100% gone in 20 years when the last of the players has passed to the Great Card Table in the sky.
I teach at a university and one of my students approached me a couple of months ago; he and some friends wanted to start a bridge club and needed a faculty advisor. (I don’t play bridge, but apparently that wasn’t important; university regs. merely require that each club have a faculty advisor.) So some kids play bridge.
But of course. Three cards. Left, Right, Across (4-handed games only), and one painful Hold hand before repeat.
You can wreak a lot of havoc if you can suss out what suit your victim likes to go void in and hand them the 7, 8, 9 of that suit. OTOH, if victim was going to run in that suit you just gave them added ammunition. If I’ve either got the Jack or good high diamonds that would protect the Jack, I can figure with certain players that, lacking Jack plus lots of high diamond protection, they’ll seek to go void in diamonds, so as soon as someone tries to ferret him out, hello Queen. Sometimes when I’m passing right and I’ve got a huge passel of diamonds, I may hand off the Jack himself, plus perhaps a couple of clubs. Inversely, if I draw the Queen and a nice entourage of other spades, I may hand someone the Ace or the King.
The folks I play with count points and casually remark on anyone taking a point-bearing trick if hearts do not as of yet lie in anyone else’s pile. People do successfully run hearts but in a night of 5-6 full games it would not be unusual that we not see it happen, and it would be rare for it to happen more than twice in a night. (That’s with 4-handed games. It seems more endemic in 3-handed games).
Again, but of course! I don’t have to take this hand, you’ve got the lead so far, but if I do I can toss another low club out as lead and Warren, who plays after me and has low score, has had to toss ever-higher clubs each time they come down and obviously does not want the lead…you’re void in clubs, let’s give Warren the lead again, shall we? You can throw some more medium-size hearts on him as we grow his pile.
I’ve wanted to learn how to play for a long while, but can’t ever seem to take the steps (like find someone else who knows and will be patient).
I come by my interest in cards through my parents, who played a bidding card game called “Setback” every Friday (and most Saturday) nights for the better of my youth. I have very fond memories of going to my relatives houses (or them coming to ours) and playing with my cousins while our parents loudly played cards in the kitchen. When I asked my parents about it once they said, “We had no money and it was cheap entertainiment.” They’d both squeeze a penny until Lincoln screamed.
My parents have always played (at least one bridge club since as long as I can remember, if not several) and still do. My dad went on “instinct” - still doesn’t believe that bidding rules apply to him. My mother is quite good, and always has been (which you need to be if playing with my father). I learned how to play when I was very young (usually by losing - they also didn’t believe in going easy on children).
I played a few times in college, when people were desperate for a fourth, I could usually sit in. But, I haven’t really done it since. I’ve also quite forgotten the conventions. It would be good to pick it up again
Can’t help with the patience but if you go here you can find the nearest American Contract Bridge League club to you. It will most certainly offer classes and a variety of people looking for partners.
Have you ever considered just NOT having a hold hand? That’s how the national Hearts championship is played. At least, when there IS a national Hearts championship.
Of course, if you have a 789 of a suit, particularly with no others, you’re likely to be passing it anyhow. It’s a rare luxury to have such a good hand that you can afford to tailor your pass to what you suspect your victim will do. And any good player will be unpredictable…
Similarly, if you have (say) KQx of spades and are passing right, you can pass the Q to the right, then confidently play the K on the first spade trick. (One of my angriest hearts memories was a hand where I was dealt an AQ doubleton of spades, passing right. I passed the Q to the right to Amy, and then on the first spade trick, she (as she tended to do) had gotten upset about something, decided to throw the game, and played the Q, expecting to take the trick. Oops.
I’d argue that such casual remarking is a bad idea. If I’m trying to moon, and 2 of my opponents are aware of what’s going on but the third isn’t, then I should be able to capitalize on that…
Then the people you play with are woefully unaggressive. I’d say that games I play in average 1 to 2 moonshots per game, and a lot more attempts, although a good attempt will NOT result in taking 25 if you fail.
Precisely. Although this kind of hearts is SUPER frustrating to try to play when not everyone knows what’s going on. When I’ve spent 5 tricks carefully arranging a killer diamond lead to get the low man, and then the person with the queen randomly throws it on me because he never thought to play hearts in any way other than just getting rid of the queen ASAP, it really kind of defeats the entire purpose of playing.
Anyhow, we should put our metaphorical money where our mouth is and have us an internet-based Dope Hearts Game. Or even a Dope Hearts Tournament. We could even play both the real way and with the Jack of Diamonds
I’m 29 and play bridge, and so does my brother (24). I don’t know too many other people in my age range who do, though plenty of them play spades. (However, I’ve never worked up the nerve to go to a bridge club, so who knows?)
The culture of bridge playing has interesting variations. Judging by old movies and TV shows, it was traditionally played in the evening by couples, but in my neighborhood, when I was growing up, it was played by the moms one or two days each week. The dads never played, so it seemed like a “women’s game”.
I’d like to learn it. There’s a bridge club just around the corner and down the street from where I live, so maybe I’ll give it a try.
My 39 year old husband has been playing at a few card clubs every so often since he was ten. He has three friends roughly the same age who also play with him when they get together.
