![]() ![]() Your group might be playing with this as an unwritten rule, so your sluffing the Queen early might be messing with their mojo as they feel you're playing a different game than they are. There is one house rule I forgot to mention it is common in some locales that the Queen of Spades, like any penalty Heart, should not be played off-suit until Hearts have been broken (obviously it can and should be played to follow suit). Usually, someone ends up a little too long in one suit after the first few tricks, and if they win a trick it's pretty much over unless they managed to keep a few low cards in a second suit that hasn't been exhausted yet. From there, it all depends on who has the lead, whether that person's paid attention to what's been thrown, and what they might be able to do to lose the lead.Once Hearts are broken, the next trick is usually "revenge" whomever won the first Heart will lead the lowest Heart they have, both to lose the trick and the lead, and make sure someone else gets 4 points (unless someone is void in Hearts).Once a Spade is led it usually starts the hunt, and until at least three Spade tricks are played or Hearts are broken, attempting to stop it by winning one safely and leading low in Clubs or Diamonds will either get you flagged as the Queen-holder, or whomever does hold the Queen will have tried to void Clubs or Diamonds, and the odds of the QS being foisted off-suit become very high.Diamonds are safer as the first hand didn't have them, so statistically speaking that tends to be another safe hand or two.Another Club typically results in someone voiding Clubs, so be wary of leading the third Club trick in the hand as you'll likely pay for it.The lead to the second trick usually determines the basic strategy of the hand unless someone has an unbalanced-enough hand to quickly say otherwise.If you don't have the Ace of Clubs, play your highest one and hope the person immediately to your right doesn't have the Ace.Play the Ace on the first trick and you control the hand from there you can start a Diamond or Club-voiding binge or a Spade hunt. If you have the Ace of Clubs, you shouldn't also have the 2 if you had any chance to get rid of both.Your hand, and your group's strategy, determines your own: If that becomes the group's formulaic play, the antidote to that is either to be long in Spades with the Queen and "lead" the hunt yourself to void everyone else in Spades, then lose the lead and play the Queen offsuit, or to not have the Queen at all, be long in Hearts and short (and low) in Spades, void Spades early and break Hearts during the hunt to punish the hunters for beating up on a woman. Your opponents need to grow a skin (or a pair) and learn to turn the tables on you by "hunting the bitch" instead of trying to void Diamonds or Clubs early as they're apparently trying to do, they should be leading low Spade after low Spade to force you to "eat" that Queen by following suit with it. Hearts is a game of doing low-down, nasty things. (And perhaps your tablemates are partly objecting that "you just made it so Steve can give us all 26 points, thanks a lot, next time think about the whole table not just getting rid of your hot card.") But if you're not, then you're doing nothing wrong and don't worry what people happen to say. This doesn't make them right, I'm just explaining the emotions of someone who wasn't expecting you to ding them.įor your own purposes, if you're getting zinged with 26 points at least once every time you play, you might consider being a little more conservative with getting rid of that QS. Then they take a trick like that, feeling happy that they've got rid of a high card and the worst that will happen is one heart, you play the QS, and they get a rude reminder that not everyone plays that way, and they react strongly to what you did. This may lead them to feel that it's relatively safe to take a trick before two different people have taken a heart, since the QS is not going to be played. Then, especially if they are not playing against a wide variety of people, they may get it into their heads that everyone does that. That's their personal rule and they're welcome to have it. Because some people worry that others will "get control" (aka "shoot the moon"), they have a personal rule not to play the QS before hearts are not just broken, but have been taken by two different people. ![]()
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