Learn About Hearts in Barbu

Video Transcript

"Hearts. Hearts in Barbu is not the same as the standard game of Hearts. Hearts in Barbu demotes the heart suit itself. It has nothing to do with the Queen of spades, has nothing to do with any other card, not even the King of hearts is a threat here. It's just plain old hearts. However, there's thirty points worth of negative scoring with the option, Hearts. The Ace of hearts will pin you for six points and each of the twelve remaining hearts will pin you with two points each. Obviously, you don't call hearts if you pick up a hand that has big hearts, like Ace, King, Queen, ten, nine, eight because you're looking at 22 points. I mean, that just a big haul. So, you really want to call hearts option when you have lots of low hearts, lots of duckers, lots of hearts that won't throw you in. Another feature of the heart suit in Barbu is that hearts can't be led until they're broken. So, that's kind of nice. I mean, there are options in there but the standard option is, hearts cannot be led until they're broken. And you might want to keep that in mind too. So when you call Hearts, don't call Hearts with big, high hearts. Don't call Hearts with a really bad hand that has a lot of high cards if you have an option for Tricks or an option for Fan Tan with closer cards, go with that. The beauty of this game, you get to make the choice of the hand you play or the contract you pick."