Hearts is an "evasion-type" trick-taking playing card game for four players, although variations can accommodate 3-6 players. The game is also known as Black Lady, Chase the Lady, Crubs, Black Maria, and Black Bitch, though any of these may refer to the similar but differently-scored game Black Lady. A standard deck of 52 playing cards is used. The objective of the game is to have the fewest points at the completion of the game. Tricks containing any heart and the queen of spades give points to the winner of the trick. There are no trumps. The game is regarded as a member of the Whist family of trick-taking games (which also includes Bridge and Spades), but the game is unique among Whist variants in that it is an evasion-type game. The game has become popular in live play among grade school students in the United States, and is enjoying more widespread popularity through Internet gaming sites and due to a Microsoft version of the game packaged with its popular Windows 3.1, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows XP and Windows Vista operating systems (see Hearts (Windows) for more information on the software game). The game of Hearts as currently known originated with a family of related games called Reverse, which became popular around 1750 in Spain. In this game, a penalty point was awarded for each trick won, plus additional points for capturing the Jack of Hearts or the Queen of Hearts. A similar game called Four Jacks centered around avoiding any trick containing a Jack, which were worth one penalty point, and the Jack of Spades worth two.

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