Hearts

Hearts is an "evasion-type" trick-taking playing card game
 for four players, although most variations can accommodate 
between three and six players. It was first recorded in
 America in the 1880s and has many variants, some of which
 are also referred to as "Hearts"; especially the games of 
Black Lady and Black Maria which are now the most popular games
 of this family in America and Britain respectively. The game 
is a member of the Whist group of trick-taking games (which
 also includes Bridge and Spades), but is unusual among Whist 
variants in that it is a trick-avoidance game; players avoid 
winning certain penalty cards in tricks, usually by avoiding 
winning tricks altogether. The original game of Hearts is still
 current, but has been overtaken in popularity by Black Lady in
 the United States and Black Maria in Great Britain.

The game of Hearts probably originated with Reversis, which became
 popular around 1750 in Spain. In this game, a penalty point was 
awarded for each trick won, plus additional points for capturing 
 A similar game called "Four Jacks" centred around avoiding 
any trick containing a Jack, which were worth one penalty point, 

Hearts itself emerged in the United States during the 1880s, The 
Standard Hoyle of 1887 reporting that it had only been played there
 for "the last five years" and was "probably of German origin".
 It described Hearts as "a most pleasant game, highly provocative of laughter".
 It was a no-trump, trick-taking game for four players using a 
full pack of cards, the aim being to avoid taking any hearts in
 tricks. The basic format has changed little since. Two scoring
 variants were mentioned under the name 'Double or Eagle Game'.
 The first was the precursor to Spot Hearts whereby the cards 
of the heart suit cost the following in chips: Ace 14, King 13,
 Queen 12, Jack 11 and pip cards their face value. The second 
scoring scheme was: Ace 5, King 4, Queen 3, Jack 2 and all pips 1 chip each.

In 1909, the Q♠ was added as the highest penalty card in a variant variously
 called Discard Hearts, after the new feature of passing unwanted 
cards to other players after the deal, or Black Lady, the nickname
 for the  This new variant has since become the standard game of 
the Hearts group in America where it is often, somewhat confusingly,
 called "Hearts". To begin with, Black Lady did not have the option
 of "shooting the moon"; that came later.

In the 1920s, the J♦ variation (ten positive points) was introduced,
 and sometime later the scoring was reversed so that penalty points 
were expressed as positive instead of negative.

The slam is known as "shooting the moon" first appeared in 
Britain in 1939 in a variant of Hearts called Hitting the Moon.
 Today this feature is a common element of modern Black Lady. [3]

Meanwhile, in Britain the game of Black Maria, with its additional
 penalty cards in the suit of spades, emerged in 1939[4] and, both
 it and another offshoot, Omnibus Hearts, are "sufficiently 
different and popular to justify descriptions as separate games."[5]

The game has increased in popularity through Internet gaming sites.