Fair question.

When I first played Hearts was on my home PC. I was simply going through the games that came with Windows 95. I didn't think much of it at the time, just a (very) mildly interesting card game, nothing of note, and I didn't think much of it for the next few years. I knew it could be networked, but I wasn't on a network, so that was kinda irrelevant.

One day my company made the switch from OS/2 Warp to Windows 95. A few months later it clicked and I remembered that Hearts was a network game. I wondered if it would work on our network - might make an interesting occasional morning tea distraction. I tried it out with a colleague of mine, and hey, it worked! Cool. Pretty soon there were four of us playing each other and having a great time. We basically knew the rules, which are simple, but not much else.

After a week or two we'd all developed various strategies for playing and surviving. No one would be a clear winner, and obviously no cheating could take place. All was fair.

Over the next several months, I would often come up with a "sure-fire" strategy for success, usually after I had strung a succession of wins or near wins together. However, I would discard partially or totally after it had failed for a string or losses or near losses. The point of that is there is no sure-fire strategy that will guarantee a win. Further, there is no sure-fire strategy that will guarantee you won't loose. That's one of the great sides to Hearts. No one wins all the time, even most of the time, and no one looses all of the time. Everyone at some stage will win and loose. The challenge is maximising the first, and minimising the second.

That's where a strategy guide comes in. When we started playing, I thought "Right, I'll get the drop on these guys. I'll get on the 'net and find me a strategy guide." To my dismay, I could find only basic guides. And, in my opinion, not very good basic guides at that.

So over time, I developed my own strategy. And I'm presenting it here for anyone who's interested. I won't say it's a great guide, but I think I win my fair share of games against some very stiff opposition.

I still haven't directly answered the question about why bother with Hearts. It's not the greatest card game in the word, let alone computer game. But it has it's place. It's very quick to play, and if you put some time in, especially against human players, it's extremely rewarding. That's why.