Hearts program cheats! I've specifically caught the game cheating. Passed Ace & King Spades to the right & they ended up across the table. I think this is BULL I would expect a program to play by the rules!

I have documented the simplistic tactics used by MS hearts to win.

  1. He always protects a position during each session.

  2. He always sacrifices a position during each session.

  3. He seems to have a "Cheat" switch, so it does not always cheat.

  4. He gives you a bunch of high cards, and some low hearts.

  5. During the pass hand he does two thing.

     1. He does not give you many spades, plus the Queen.

     2. He does not give you any spades, then passes you the Queen.

  6. He shoots the moon an astounding number of times on the last hand, if it is a close game. 

  7. I suspect anyone that says this program is not cheating is probably the programmer of it.

I like playing Hearts so have overlooked the predicable and frequent program-rigs in the game...until today.    

I had the lead and was holding a lot of spades...and led with a spade to flush out the queen.

To my surprise, north, east and west threw out diamonds.

I paused, wondering how I could have missed the queen having been played.

Regardless, I led again with a spade, and like before, all players responded with diamonds.

I did it a third time and received two diamonds and a heart.

On my FOURTH spade led, East played the Queen.

I was stunned.

That's beyond the pale of cheating.

That's BAD, BAD programming.

Every time that you send to Microsoft that MSHearts cheats and you get a reply from Marilyn, this is Microsoft's way of brushing you off.  Microsoft KNOWS that the games cheats; this is why this game is within a Microsoft product.

For years I could see Hearts reading your hand before the next set of cards was played, thus giving it the advantage of knowing the best way to defeat you.  The best example of this I have seen was at the 4th round, the one where no cards are exchanged.  I was dealt the King of Spades only, the rest of my cards consisting of Hearts, Diamonds and Clubs.  After the first hand with the obligatory 2 of clubs lead  was finished, one of the opposing 'players' immediately lead with the Queen of Spades, thus proving that

a) the system knew I was holding a singleton and was vulnerable and

b) the system 'arranged' to have the Queen of Spades strategically placed for that lead as there is no such thing as chance with this software.

Since then it has become obvious that Hearts is a cheating game as it defies the odds to win from impossible positions.  For example, how often have you been in the position of having the opposing 'players' each with 70 plus points and you in the low teens for example to suddenly get a run of 4 or 5 bad hands to lose?  For me this happens far beyond the realms of chance.

Given that the original Hearts game as enunciated by Hoyle's Book of Games (a pre computer classic) states quite categorically that the game of Hearts is one player against the rest, not one player against 3 as it is in the Microsoft version, then really I think that Microsoft should either change the name of their game to Cheats or to rewrite this pathetic game and make it a lot fairer to the player.

To think that Microsoft squeals like a girl when anyone even looks like cheating them but they cheat on their paying customers with a game like this just leaves me in total contempt of them.

And then, to add insult to injury, at the end of another game where you have been cheated on consistently, the game comes up with the message of "Bad luck....;  Bad luck?  Total manipulation more to the point.

All I can say from this is that if you want to be manipulated by software and have you sense of fairness insulted then play this game to your heart's content (pun intended).  My attitude is a pox on Microsoft for treating me in this fashion and I have sympathy to those who return the favour to Microsoft.

I will be also be sending this to the URL that Marilyn has supplied.