Using a 6 Suited Deck For Hearts

An interesting version of Hearts involves six or more players and requires a six suited deck. The only deck I’ve ever used or even seen for that matter was manufactured by Empire. I found a deck a long time ago in a specialty game shop and thought this would work for a mega game of Hearts. The extra black suit was ‘anchors’ and the extra red suit was ‘crowns’. There were 78 cards in total so if you wanted to play with more than 6 players you would have to remove some cards from the deck.




Examples:

7 players:
78 / 7 = 11 cards ea. remove 1 card (2 of crowns for example)

8 players:

78 / 8 = 9 cards ea. remove 6 cards (2, 3, 4, 5 ,6 ,7 of crowns)
or add the 2 jokers - 10 cards. ea (jokers can be discarded when you can’t follow suit i.e. they can never capture a trick)

9 players:

78 / 9 = 8 cards ea. remove 6 cards (2, 3, 4, 5 ,6 ,7 of crowns)

10 players:

add the 2 jokers - 8 cards. ea (jokers can be discarded when you can’t follow suit i.e. they can never capture a trick)

We ended up making some rule changes to spice the game up a bit.

1) All 3 black queens are worth 13 pts. ea.

2) The 2 of diamonds leads the first trick. (This was necessary due to the fact that the 2 of clubs could potentially draw the queen of clubs now designated a penalty card, on the first trick.)

3) The card passing sequence begins with passing to the player on your immediate left then one more player to the left each hand into you are ‘passing to yourself’ which would be the keeper. So with 7 players for example the sequence would be: 1 left, 2 left, 3 left, 4 left (same as 3 to the right), 5 left (or 2 right) 6 left (or immediate right) then keeper.