Hearts - afew suggestions to improve games

[Time vdv]

I used to play hearts on Yahoo a lot (this was 5+ years ago) until they cancelled it. They had a few tweaks that would improve the game here as well.

1) Label the cards that were just passed to you. When one player is slower, you really need to have you eyes at full focus on the screen to not miss what exact cards you were given. At Yahoo, you needed to actually 'accept' the pass, so everyone knew exactly what cards they were given.

2) TRAM. Often it is quite obvious that the remaining cards will all end up with a particular player. When at that time there is nothing left to win (ie, points taken so far have ended up with two different players or more), that player should be able to say'The Rest Are Mine' and click a button. It results in that player taking all the remaining cards in the game and makes anywhere between 1 to 3-5 rounds obsolete.

3) Enable people to already select the card they're going to play next. When the first player plays a card, especially towards the end of the round, people often already know what they're going to play, regardless of what other players do.

4) Keep something visual that shows you in what direction the passes went, this can be a simple arrow. People often forget, if someone shoots the moon (manages to collect all hears and the dame), sometimes the entire table doesn't even remember who provided the pass that made it possible.


5) Lastly, something that wasn't on Yahoo, but it was suggested recently and I'd like to support the request: automate the last hand, it's already done in Take 5, the same can apply to Hearts..


Suggestions 2, 3 and 5 together speed up the game significantly, often 15-20% or even more.

[Liallan]

1) Label the cards that were just passed to you. When one player is slower, you really need to have you eyes at full focus on the screen to not miss what exact cards you were given. At Yahoo, you needed to actually 'accept' the pass, so everyone knew exactly what cards they were given.

+1 Especially useful in turn-based when you aren't there to even see it.

3) Enable people to already select the card they're going to play next. When the first player plays a card, especially towards the end of the round, people often already know what they're going to play, regardless of what other players do.

The problem I have with things like this, or automated things, especially in turn-based, is it makes it difficult to know what is going on. And this isn't a game where you want to miss what is going on. Granted, the game log is there to tell you what everyone played, but it can be difficult to know where things left off and which things have happened since. (I have a very strict rule I follow as to when to check the game log so I don't confuse turns.)

And when playing with others who aren't necessarily that great at it, they might not recognize a situation in which it will matter what someone else plays and over-use that kind of ability when they shouldn't. (It's bad enough I'm about to lose 26 points cause apparently no one else was paying attention. Imagine how much less they could pay attention if they just assumed things ahead of time.)

I'm not even sure I understand the advantage here. You have to decide your play at some point - I don't see what difference it makes when you do it. I might "save time" when it comes to your turn, but you have to take up that time at some point. And you have to wait on the others either way.