Passing low cards may make it obvious to your recipient that you are trying to shoot the moon, so be aware of this fact. Also, keep in mind that some players will hold on to a high card, rather than passing it, precisely to prevent other players from shooting the moon. If the player passing to you is likely to do this, it will make shooting the moon much harder.
If you are missing some important cards especially aces , and you pass away all your low cards, you may end up with a 25 point hand if the player next to you holds an ace. If you have the K, Q, J, 8, 7, or 3 of diamonds, look to see when someone plays the ace. Once they do, you hold the three highest diamonds and can likely go on a run later in the game if you get the lead.
But until the ace of diamonds falls, you don't hold the highest card, and someone else can stop your run. Until that ace falls, you may not want to tip your hand and make your moonshot attempt too blatant. Otherwise, that annoying missing ace may come back to take one heart at the wrong time and ruin your plans. A popular method is to use your high cards to take tricks repeatedly, and then play your long suit starting with the highest card to run the table.
By the time you hit the lower cards in your long suit, everyone else should be void, so you should win the tricks even with a three. Once hearts are broken, you may want to be able to lead A, K, Q of hearts, in order to take three rounds of hearts from other players.
It's okay to have a single low card like a five of clubs lingering in your hand at the end of your run, so long as you have already taken all the hearts.
What you want to avoid is the scenario where you run the table, but on the final trick, you play a five of clubs, your neighbor plays the jack of clubs she was saving, and someone else drops a heart to give her a point -- and ruin your moonshot.
If you can clear out all the hearts early on, all you have to worry about is the queen of spades. Once you get all of that, it doesn't matter if you have a few cards stuck in your hand that will lose your tricks, because you have all the points.
You can also try to "plan out" your plays in the early part of the round so that you'll have low cards in 2 suits left towards the end, thus lessening your chance of being stuck. This is a no-brainer. In an ideal world, you would remember all the cards that have been played, but in practice this is not feasible for most people, so it's better to limit yourself to the most important ones.
The lower cards in each suit aren't usually worth memorising, unless you're trying to shoot the moon. More on this later. On the first hearts trick after hearts are broken, somebody will most likely lead a low heart, like 4, 3, or 2. If you are leading, lead low.
The other players will use up their low hearts trying to lose the trick. If you lead a middle card, it is likely you will get the hearts. On the second heart trick, it is usually safe to lead a middle card, like 5, 6, 7, 8 because the lower cards have been used up. To get rid of the high hearts, discard them on other tricks. The two and most apparent rules to avoid the Queen are to either avoid having the King and Ace of spades or to get rid of them as quickly as possible by either discarding or playing them when all the other players have already played.
You will not have to worry about them if you have a long suit of spades or you have the Queen of Spades, though it may still be useful to get rid of them as they are high cards. In the passing you should never throw away spades below the Queen of Spades. However, there is one thing you need to watch out for. To get the Jack of Diamonds, which subtracts 10 points from your score, you should keep your high diamonds. If you have the Jack, you should not pass it away.
While playing, when someone leads a diamond, play one of your lower diamonds. If the Jack appears, you should take it with one of your higher diamonds. If you have the Jack, do not lead it unless all of the higher diamonds have already been played. You will not get the Jack by leading other suits because the holder of it will obviously not discard it unless he is forced to, on the last trick. Shooting the moon is when you want to win all the hearts and the Queen of spades.
If you succeed, you gain no points that round and every other player gains 26 points in some circles, you have an option to instead take 26 points off your score. A variant is Shooting the Sun, when you win all of the tricks, then the other players get 52 points. Playing can be a bit tough. This is easiest to do, if you have 4 or more high cards of one suit.
Once they are broken it gets really easy. All you have to do is lead out the high Hearts and take them all down. There are two neat tricks you can use during play. You can lead out with the Ace or King of Spades as soon as you can. The other trick is to play your highest Hearts from the lowest to highest. You should do this because, if you lead out with the Ace right away, it becomes pretty obvious what you are doing and other players will start saving their highest Hearts in hopes of spoiling your plan.
This is probably the easiest situation to play, but you need to play smart. Make sure you have the highest cards of that suit and at least 7 cards.
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