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Spot Hearts

This is a variation in which the penalty value of the hearts is their pip-value. That is, the two the 2 penalty points, the three 3, the four 4, etc. The jack of hearts carries 11 penalty points, queen 12, king 13, ace 14, and the queen of spades 25.

As an alternative, some play that hearts from 2-10 are face value, all heart pictures are 10, the heart ace is 15, and the spade queen is 25.

Playing spot hearts the scores are higher, so a higher target score is needed - say 500.

Black Maria

This is the British version of Hearts, sometimes also called Dirty Lady

NB. There is also an entirely different Finnish game called Black Maria (Mustamaija in Finnish; Svarta Maija in Swedish). A description of that game will be found on the Mustamaija page.

In Black Maria there are usually 3 players; the 2 of clubs is removed from the pack and 17 cards are dealt to each player. Black Maria can also be played by four people, in which case all the cards are dealt out.

Cards always passed in same direction - the books say pass three to the right, but some players pass three to the left.

The player to dealer's left leads first and may lead anything. There is no restriction on leading hearts.

There are various alternative scoring schemes:

• 1 for each heart; 13 for the queen of spades (as in the USA)
• 1 for each heart; 13 for the queen of spades; 10 for the king of spades; 7 for the ace of spades (total 43 points)
• as in Spot Hearts: 2 - 10 of hearts face value; J, Q, K of hearts 10 points; ace of hearts 15 points; queen of spades 25 points. In this case the game is played to 500 points, not 100.