Avoid every heart and the queen of spades. Or take them all.
An avoidance game. Every trick you win is a liability, and the aim is to finish with as few penalty cards as possible — unless you decide to take all of them.
A 52-card deck dealt out evenly, thirteen cards each for four players. Aces are high. There is no trump suit.
Each heart is worth 1 point. The queen of spades is worth 13. Points are bad, and the game ends when someone reaches 100.
Before each hand every player passes three cards face down. The direction rotates: left, right, across, then no pass at all, and repeats.
The holder of the two of clubs leads it. You must follow suit if you can. Whoever plays the highest card of the suit led takes the trick and leads the next.
No hearts and no queen of spades may be played on the first trick. Hearts may not be led until a heart has been discarded on some earlier trick — this is called breaking hearts. The exception is a hand containing nothing but hearts.
Collect every heart and the queen of spades in one hand and the scoring inverts: you score nothing and every other player takes 26. It is the reason you cannot simply dump penalty cards on the leader without watching what they are collecting.
At three, five or six players the deck is trimmed so it deals evenly, usually by removing low clubs or diamonds.