Trivia / Hearts

• Common Knowledge:
  • The version of Hearts that everyone knows today is originally called Black Lady, and in fact isn't the original version of Hearts - that version didn't have the Queen of Spades as a penalty card. Many historic books about card game treat (the original) Hearts and Black Lady as two different games.
  • Due to its popularity in the United States, Black Lady is often nicknamed as "American hearts" by some people to avoid confusion with the original version of Hearts. However, what they do not realize that the original version of Hearts, on which Black Lady is based of, was also first played in the United States. Hearts is actually based off an older European card game called Reversis, where the point cards are the face cards and the aces instead of the heart cards.
• Completely Different Title: Known in France as La Dame de Pique ("the Queen of Spades"), and in Australia as Rickety Kate (again, after the Queen of Spades).
• Newbie Boom: When Hearts was introduced as a computer game in early Windows operating systems, the popularity of the game would rise again, bringing in people who haven't played the game physically before to try it. Since then, Microsoft included Hearts as part of Windows computers up to 7.
• What Could Have Been: Hearts was originally going to be included as part of Microsoft Casual Games along with Solitaire Collection and others, however it was scrapped in favor of a word game collection due to a community vote loss.