Hearts for Bunnies
I've seen and heard a lot of nonsense while playing and about how to play this game. Here are a few of my thoughts, in particular about that most contentious of issues, shooting the moon. I hope they help. I also hope you won't use them against me, but that's silly, of course you will. I shouldn't be giving out helpful suggestions. Well lordy hush ma mouf!
1. Don't try to shoot the moon.
Ever. Well, maybe hardly ever. It's hard against competent opponents.
Really hard. You might think it's a long way down to the chemist but that's peanuts compare to space...sorry. Wrong quote. Likely the other players will work out what you're up to even before the first card is played - just from your hand-on. Maybe even before the cards are dealt: good players are
always alert to someone trying to shoot the moon, and know several ways to stop them. That's why they're good players! And without being able to pass inconvenient cards on to another player before the first trick is played, it's even harder. Ok, not all opponents are that bright. Including me, I can have my moments of crass stupidity. Far too many of them, alas.
Very occasionally one can swindle some bunnies. One needs a lot of luck, and some kindness.
One rare example: on one hand, after a few rounds, I had
S 10 (potentially losing)
H J (also potentially losing)
D (void)
C AQJx3 (but the king was still out there).
I'd already copped the queen of spades and some hearts, and my moonshot try looked like yet another disaster, but I thought, what ho. So I led the spade. It held. So far so good. Next I led the jack of hearts. It also held, as the bunnies didn't want to take four hearts. Better and better. Now only the king of clubs to worry about. I led the ace of clubs. One bunny kindly and voluntarily dropped the king of clubs on my ace, and that was it, game over. I ran the rest of the clubs which were by then all winners. The one non-bunny knew exactly what I was up to, but didn't have the cards to stop me. He was justifiably deeply unhappy, as not only was my moonshot successful, but it also ended the game. To his credit he was an honourable player, he didn't tell the bunnies what I was up to and how to stop me during the play, although he made it abundantly clear in the postmortem, which was fair enough.
Don't assume you'll get that much luck or kindness. Hearts players are usually both clever and cruel, and will delight in frustrating your moonshots. Usually if even one opponent has a clue what you're up to then you're probably in deep doo-doo. Up to your eyeballs.
2. How to shoot the moon.
Ideally, if you really want to try for the moon, you want all winners. E.g. AKQ AKQ AKO AKQJ. Ok, you're not going to see a hand like that. Ever. No matter how many lifetimes you live. There are only four such possible hands out of squillions of possible hands. Ok, there are other similar combinations, but the odds are still miniscule, you'll never see them. Competent opponents will keep a long heart suit with some top cards, and maybe pass on a middling heart or two, and you're snookered. You'll never be able to get away from those hearts, so eventually they'll be led, someone will take a small hit of hearts for the team, and lead back to one of your winners. And you will be doomed, I tell you. DOOMED!
So, what you're really looking for is a longish, solid suit, very few losers in the other suits, maybe some outside winners and/or voids.
Ideally somerthing like
S AKQxxxx2
H AK
D
C KQx
Maybe more realistically
S AKQxxxx2
H A
D Kxx
C x.
Note the 2 in the long suit (the 3 if your long suit is clubs). That 2 (or 3) is vital. Why? The length in the suit means that if you run the suit, all the low cards inlcuding the 2 or 3 will take a trick, but if some smarty-pants drops a heart on one of your innocent losers, you still have an exit card. Provided that someone else still has a card in that suit. There are always risks...
3. Exit strategy
That's the next important point. A lot of the time, your moonshots will crash and burn: you take the QS, and a bunch of hearts, but not - quite - all of them. Worst case is of course -25 points. Therefore, you need a plan B, an exit strategy, in case something goes wrong, to minimise the hit. Ideally you'll take a very few hearts. It needs a safe loser, so if things go badly you can first get rid of your now dangerous winners - ideally without too much damage - and then exit with said loser.
4. Avoiding the Queen of spades.
There are always some hands where you simply cannot avoid getting landed with the QS. After passing on cards your hand ends up with the QS singleton, or maybe AK of spades, and spades are lead through you, and that's that. One dead bunny. Or you have a bunch of high diamonds or clubs, and no exit card, and after a few rounds some nasty person dumps the QS on one of your middling cards that turns out to be a winner. Another dead bunny. So it goes. Nevertheless one should of course always be looking for ways to dodge the QS.
Obviously having lots of losing spades is good, so that you can duck spades until the cows come home.
Even better, you have lots of spades INCLUDING the AKQJ.
e.g. AKQJxxx.
Then - assuming that you have no hope of a moonshot - you can lead your top spades - not the queen of course - drawing everyobe else's spades, until you can play a safe loser. With any luck you might even take a small number of hearts, so that you know no-one else can shoot the moon.
Better still, if you have say, AKJ1098xx, you can force whoever is holding the QS to take it: lead the J, then the 10, then the 9, etc. etc. Even if they have Qxxxx, you have more spades than they do (even excluding the AK), and they can't win a trick except by taking the queen of spades. They will of course totally hate you, as you forced them to take it, and will carry that grudge for the rest of the game, and be looking to do you down at every opportunity until they send you out the back door. So it goes. Don't play Hearts unless you can deal with paranoia, grudges and revenge-takers.
Another way is to set up a void suit, preferably in clubs or diamonds, so that you can discard your A or K or Q of spades when that suit is led. The weakness is of course that you're relying on someone else to lead your void suit, when a spade is a very common and usually safe lead, but you never know. The player on lead may have something like Axx or Kxx in spades and can't risk leading spades, or they may even be void in spades and have to lead something else.
Usually it won't happen, but then again, occasionally it will, and you'll have dodged a bullet.
Of course, you can also get landed with the queen of spades on a lead of some other suit. If it's a long suit with some safe losers, it's easy, you can just keep on ducking. If you have only a few, with one or more winners and a loser, ducking early may well be fatal. Instead, try and take your winners early, ideally if you're playing last or at least late to a trick, to minimise the chance of your LHO dropping the QS on you. Only lead your loser once you've disposed of your winners.
Also, try and work out who has the AKQS, and play appropriately. Easiest of all is if you passed any of those cards to another player. Ideally, pass the QS to your right-hand opponent, then you know exctly where it is and exactly how to play. Not so easy if your LHO has the queen. If I think I can get away with it I like to keep the QS, as it gives me more control over its destiny, and it doesn't matter and in fact helps if I'm give the A or K of spades. Another advantage is that it keeps the other players guessing. Of course one needs to have a fair number of spades to risk keeping the QS. At least four spades in total, preferably more. However, assuming one isn't contemplating the moon, it's also advisable to have some way of depositing the queen on some other bunny. It's terribly embarassing to keep the queen and still get landed with it.
5. Stopping some other ratfink shooting the moon.
Good players usually don't try unless it's a sure thing, or at least a good chance, and/or they have an exit strategy. Sometimes one has such a rubbish hand that one is going to take so many penalty points that one may as well try for the moon, in case one gets lucky.
Anyway, how to stop them?
One easy way is to pass on a heart loser. Maybe not the 2, that's a nice one to keep. Maybe not an honour either. If they already have AQJxxxx of hearts, and you give them the king, bingo! You've just given them a running heart suit and an excellent chance at a moonshot. So, give them a very middling heart - such as the 8 or 9 or 10 - or maybe a couple, and keep the A2 or K2 of hearts. Ok, this means you might have to cop a few hearts, but -4 is better than -26. And you might be able to discard your winning heart if you have or can set up a void suit. Just make sure that the points break
before discarding that heart honour.
If necessary, simply take a (small) hit for the team. One heart probably won't hurt much. Even four, if you strongly suspect there's a moonshot attempt on. Look upon it as a safety play, an insurance premium. Really it's not for the team, it's purely selfish, but intelligently so. Selfish bunnies think - usually very wrongly - that they should always try to not take any hearts or the queen of spades.
Firstly, it's not always possible.
Secondly, trying to avoid taking any penalty points can have exactly the opposite effect - later on in the hand one takes many more, maybe almost all the penalty points. Better a small hit early than a debacle at the end.
Worst of all, avoiding taking any hearts makes it much easier for smarter players to shoot the moon.
Another benefit is that by deliberately and perhaps unnecessarily taking a small hit, you may sow fear, uncertainty and doubt in the other players' minds. Did you really have to take that trick? Was it safety play? Or are you trying a moonshot, and you had to make sure of those stray hearts? Muahahaha. Let them sweat, keep them guessing, and maybe they'll make a catastrophic error. If they think that you are trying to shoot the moon, but you really aren't, they will (or should) be inclined to take such a hit themselves, in which case, you may well be able to avoid more penalty cards than otherwise.
6. Bringing the leader back to the pack.
There is another thread on this subject elsewhere...
http://forum.boardgamearena.com/viewtop ... egy#p14087
This is even harder than shooting the moon, and often won't work, if the leader has a safe hand, but sometimes there are ways. Typically it requires all the non-leaders to work out what's going on, and what they have to do, in the dark, without colluding (ie. telling each other exactly what they've got, working out what cards the leader has got, and how to nail the leader to the wall.). Colluding is cheating. Just say no!
So. You and two other bunnies have bean busy crashing and burning, and are on about 40 points or maybe much less, and the one good player is smugly cruising to a crushing victory on a huge number of points. Time to quit? Never! I have *never* quit a game on Boardgame Arena. Ever. Any game. No matter how badly I was doing. No matter how offensive the opponents were getting. Ok, afterwards I red-flagged the offensivos and I will never play with them again, but it was only a few minutes of my life. Sorry, I digress.
So. What to do? If you can, drop the queen of spades on the leader, and then make sure the hearts break. The most stupid thing I have ever read was the claim that "You shouldn't drop the QS on the leader until hearts have broken in case they go for a moonshot". Ok, I have heard and read much stupider things than that, but in the context of playing Hearts, it's the stupidest thing I've ever read. By far. Naming no names to protect the stupid, or at least, the grievously misled. I suspect some conniving Hearts player may have passed on that "gem" with malice aforethought.
Anyway, it is b*lls. Total, complete and utter b*lls.
Firstly, if nothing changes, the leader is probably going to win anwyay.
Secondly, if the position is that bad, one must take some risks. Every game and every hand has some risks.
Thirdly, look at it from the leader's POV. Moonshots are usually very high risk, and it is very foolish for a player with a good lead to risk destroying that position with a moonshot attempt which may well fail badly. If you and/or the other players have been smart, said leader will have been given some heart losers, and/or will have some known weaknesses that can be exploited.
Fourthly, to try to level the scores, the leader will need to get a lot of penalty points, and the QS is the easiest way to do this.
Fifthly, there are only 13 tricks in each deal. So, on average, each player will only take 3 or 4 tricks, sometimes fewer. So, chances to land the leader with the QS will be somewhat rare. You may only get one. So, grab that chance with both paws! Don't hesitate! Just do it! Do it now! Ahem. Sorry. Got a bit carried away there.
Sixthly, worry about splitting the hearts later. It's much harder to take all 13 hearts than one queen of spades. If the hearts happen to break before you drop the QS on the leader, well and good. However, not everything can be done with perfect knowledge. If you want perfect knowledge, p*ss off and play Chess, or Go, and leave hearts to those brave enough to take the necessary risks.
In summary, take care of the queen of spades, and the hearts will take care of themselves.
Well, probably. You will still need to stay alert. Don't assume that the other bunnies will be smart enough to realise that they should throw themselves on a hand grenade, or even voluntarily take a single heart. You may well have to take one for the team yourself. To be fair, if another bunny is within a whisker of going out the back door, maybe they can't afford to take even a single heart. You know all the scores, so you can work out the score, and what to do.
Anyway, that's all folks. Have fun, and avoid the trolls.
Holding the queen back makes people shy to play to stop the moon - once the queen is gone folks in 2nd and 3rd position (relative to mooner) will usually jump on anything where they might take a point. Score is the interesting factor to me... I learned hearts as a money-game, and there the stop-the-moon tradeoff is easy: if I take 12 points or less I should stop it, 14 or more I shouldn't, and 13 is a toss-up. But on BGA (or in a tournament) the score can change the break-point from 13 down to 1, or as high as 25! Or anywhere in between. And it's not just about understanding one's own break point, and other people's, but also estimating what their psychology is - if their stop-the-moon decision is likely to be irrational you want to at least know in which direction they are irrational.