I don't believe it cheats, not do I believe that the behaviour changes as the scores change - the players are just as dumb as ever.

Also, your hand isn't really that strange, I've often had games like that.

What is rarer, is that you end up in the situation you did with only hearts left, and you think "there is no way I can shoot this now", and then someone else leads a heart when hearts hadn't yet been broken. So then you end up shooting because you've got the top 6 hearts.


I have had an even weirder hand once playing Hearts on zone.com. I actually got dealt the ace of clubs and every heart except the king. Lucky I had the ace. I told the other players "just put it on autoplay, there's no way you can possibly beat me", but they refused, and futily played each and every round as if they could somehow beat me when it was obvious I had the only hearts left in the game.

If you're at all interested in hearts, you should play the variant Jack of Diamonds. Normal rules, except the JoD is worth -10, which suddenly turns the Diamonds suit into a very tactical consideration, rather than a 'wasted' filler suit in regular hearts. I found playing online against most players that people are stupidly greedy, and they always aim to win the JoD. I however play defensively with my goal being to score as few points as possible, and if I happen to snag the JoD, all well and good. Usually the person who gets the JoD also gets the QoS, so they end up at +3 anyway.

 

As a player of Hearts I have to agree that computer cheats when you are ahead, particularly if it is a big lead. Of course I don't play a Microsoft version, so my paranoia has no bias!

A friend gifted me a copy of Hoyle Card Games some years ago, mostly because I love to play cribbage but can never find anyone who will play it with me; Cribbage is the only card game that I am extremely good at.

This game lets you choose your opponents. They all play with equal skill, based on what level you set their intelligence to, so the only change is to the (witty?) banter that is exchanged during game play. One of the opponents that you can choose is a little, green alien guy. The first time I played the game through I nearly died laughing as I was thinking through my next move and the alien was tapping his fingers in boredom, then he held up a sign that said "We have Elvis".

When I play card games now I usually play them on Pogo.com, since I can play with my Mom either on my team (in Pinochle and Euchre) or as an opponent. It was during one of those games that I shot the sun.


The only time in my life I have ever pulled that off, and it was done by accident.