Learn About the King of Hearts in Barbu

Video Transcript

"The king of hearts, Barbu, or the king of hearts is a potent card. He's sort of like the male lion in a pride and this one happens to have thirty points on his back. It's sort of like a super sized queen of spades in the game of Hearts with four more hearts with it. Now when you're playing king of hearts, it doesn't matter how many tricks you take, it doesn't matter how many hearts you take, the idea is don't take the king of hearts. Just don't take it. Now the other rule of the game is that you have to throw it off on somebody at first opportunity. It's kind of a mean game. Somebody leading some innocent little card like the four of diamonds may soak up His Nibs, the king of hearts. So when you choose king of hearts, you want to choose it in a hand that you have lots of hearts, at least, almost like the queen of spades, at least four that are smaller hearts or maybe ace, king, queen, jack, and you're taking a chance there. You want to have a hand that not only has protection for that king of hearts, but you also want a hand that you can strip outside suits and get off the lead at the end of the hand so that then you can wait to pounce on somebody with the Barbu card."