Talk:Black Lady

Name
This is an older version of hearts and I think more formally is called black moria and so may not warrant a pageTetron76 (talk) 20:54, 27 February 2011 (UTC)


 * I think you mean 'Black Maria'. Either way this is a recognised variant of Hearts that appeared in the 1920s and is still popular today. It is often listed separately in card game compendia so merits a standalone article. Bermicourt (talk) 13:13, 24 January 2020 (UTC)


 * I was unable to find any reliable sourcing for the penalty scores just now, but both Pagat and Parlett give scoring for a game listed primarily as "Black Maria". Any objections to using that as a source here? (Should we rename this article to Black Maria, even?) --Lord Belbury (talk) 10:48, 27 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Pinging for a second opinion before I change anything. --Lord Belbury (talk) 09:21, 31 January 2020 (UTC)


 * The sources are quite inconsistent and we should probably do a survey first. My understanding is this. The original game of Hearts appeared in the 1880s and originally just had the hearts as penalty cards as the name logically suggests. Black Lady then added the Queen of Spades as a penalty card and, in America, was called Black Lady Hearts. Then, according to Parlett in the Penguin Book of Card Games, Black Maria was invented by Hubert Philips (in the 1920s?) and added the Ace and Kings as penalty cards; John McLeod (pagat.com) affirms that scoring system for Black Maria. However, Parlett is inconsistent himself describing Black Maria in his History of Card Games as the game with the hearts and Queen of Spades as the penalties; but calling the same game Hearts in his Penguin book. Meanwhile Gibson's Hoyle affirms Black Lady as the game where the Queen of Spades is a penalty and equates it to Black Maria and Black Widow. I'm taking delivery of 3 more sources in the next couple of weeks and am also compiling a spreadsheet tracking the appearance of card games in English-language compendia since the 1600s, so should be in a better position to review the history and scoring systems of Hearts/Black Maria/Black Lady rules then. It certainly needs sorting out. Bermicourt (talk) 09:53, 31 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Very good, look forward to seeing what you come back with. --Lord Belbury (talk) 13:13, 31 January 2020 (UTC)
 * I've done some interim research. A brief summary so far is that:
 * The basic game of Hearts (hearts only; hearts score 1 point each) is overwhelmingly known as Hearts
 * The name Hearts is sometimes, confusingly, applied to elaborations of the above
 * Most of the variants - Spot Hearts, Auction Hearts, Cancellation Hearts, etc. - are consistently named
 * The names Black Lady, Black Lady Hearts and Black Maria are used quite inconsistently, sometimes interchangeably with each other and with Hearts
 * Black Lady appears first, in the 1920s in America, and originally just added the Q as a penalty card worth 13 points. I have seen it called American Hearts. Later the variant adds exchanging.
 * Black Maria is supposed to have been invented by Hubert Phillip. It appears in the 1950s and adds exchanging to Black Lady and, optionally, the slam called 'shooting the moon'. However, Parlett and other sources say it added the A and K to the penalty cards. I've yet to bottom that out.
 * Black Lady Hearts appears to be a classic copying error. In early books it was indexed as "Black Lady - Hearts" meaning that it was a variant of Hearts. Later copyists misread it as the name of the game and dropped the hyphen! This error continues to be perpetuated.
 * I can't find a source for the scoring system in this article, although it looks very like Greek Hearts in which players score 50 points for the Q, 15 for the A, 10 for heart courts and 1 for heart pips.
 * So all the articles will need sorting out to reflect the sources; but I still don't have quite enough information to do that yet. Bermicourt (talk) 13:30, 1 February 2020 (UTC)
 * P.S. That said, unless we can find a source for the odd scoring in this article, it should probably be rewritten to describe the most common rules for the game, with a mention of how the name is applied to other Heart variants. In the longer term, I suspect Black Lady will end up as a section in the main Hearts article once that is sorted out and that this article would be become a redirect. Meanwhile, Black Maria (the English game) probably deserves a separate article, yet to be created. Bermicourt (talk) 14:19, 1 February 2020 (UTC)

It would be good to find a source for these particular rules, but I'm coming to the conclusion that this is actually a version of Black Maria with a scoring system akin to Greek Hearts. The distinctive feature of Black Maria is that the A and K are penalty cards in addition to the Q. However they are normally scored at 10, 7 and 13 points, not 40, 20 and 50. So my plan is to generate a new article called Black Maria (card game) with the typical rules based on six modern sources. It'll also mention that the name is sometimes (erroneously) applied to Black Lady, in which only the Q is a penalty card. The scoring scheme here can be added as well, but with a "citation needed" tag and a comment that it may be (incorrectly) called Black Lady. I don't doubt it's veracity, but it may not have been captured in the literature yet (or only in local literature as is often the case). This article can then be recast to reflect the two main versions of Black Lady - the original one which just added the Black Lady to the basic Hearts game - and the later one in which the ludemes of passing cards and a slam were added. When the main Hearts article has been tidied up, it could merged with that and become a redirect, but Black Maria is sufficiently distinct (culturally and game-wise) to merit a separate article IMHO. I'm not promising this can be done quickly, but it's a plan and will clear up the confusion caused by this article at least. Bermicourt (talk) 21:13, 2 February 2020 (UTC)


 * Don't forget this is Wikipedia, where any unsourced rule could be somebody's family house rule or a sneaky attempt to win an offline argument! Before I edited it last week, this article was saying that the scoring was 12 for the and no points for all other royals. I looked into it because the "Smith Variant" sounded like a house rule and "There are therefore 179 points ..." didn't add up. I arbitrarily settled on a stable, but still not sourced, earlier version.
 * Your plan sounds like a good one. --Lord Belbury (talk) 09:48, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
 * I've now created the article on Black Maria having done extensive research and uncovered over a dozen book sources dating from 1990 to 2014. I'd still like to track down the first description by Phillips and mentioned by Parlett. That must date to before 1964 when Phillips died. Meanwhile I'll start turning this article into one on the real 'Black Lady' which is the American elaboration of Hearts. I'm considering removing the rules here because I have still found no evidence for the scoring system. And apart from that, it's now covered by the new Black Maria article. Bermicourt (talk) 22:32, 4 February 2020 (UTC)
 * P.S. Yes I had spotted the arithmetical error before - wondered where it had gone! Bermicourt (talk) 22:33, 4 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Fine work! Thanks for putting the time and effort in. --Lord Belbury (talk) 22:37, 4 February 2020 (UTC)
 * That's done. I just need to expand and adjust this article further and then look at the main Hearts article which is all over the place. Bermicourt (talk) 11:44, 5 February 2020 (UTC)

Potential confusing sentence in the Modern Rules section
The modern rules section states:

''A innovation in modern Black Lady is the take-all or shooting the moon, whereby a player may aim to capture all the penalty cards; i.e., the Black Lady and all hearts. If he succeeds, he scores zero, while each opponent scores twenty-six penalty points. If he fails, he scores twenty-six penalty points as normal.''


 * I believe that the i.e. should be e.g. The former means "in other words" and the latter means "example". It seems that we are giving an example here.
 * The third sentence does not make sense to me. If the player fails to capture all penalty cards, he will not have 26 penalty points. So how could he "score twenty-six penalty points as normal"? AuburnMagnolia (talk) 03:29, 11 February 2021 (UTC)


 * Thanks, those are good questions. The "i.e." is intentional so, you're right, it could read: whereby a player may aim to capture all the penalty cards; in other words the Black Lady and all hearts. Sentence 3 is correct: each heart scores 1 penalty point and there is a total of 13 of them. And the Black Lady is worth 13 penalty points. So the total is (13 x 1) + 13 = 26. Hope that helps. Bermicourt (talk) 08:18, 11 February 2021 (UTC)


 * Fair enough; whether it is i.e. vs e.g. is debatable. But the sentence "If he fails, he scores twenty-six penalty points as normal" still does not make sense. If he fails to take all of the penalty cards, how will the player score "twenty-six penalty points as normal"? If he does not take all of the penalty cards, by definition, he will have 25 or fewer points. AuburnMagnolia (talk) 02:10, 12 February 2021 (UTC)


 * The choice of "i.e." or "e.g." is not really debatable. "e.g." means "here's an example (and, by the way, there are other examples)", whereas "the penalty cards i.e. ..." in this case means "the penalty cards which (to be precise) are...". However, your second point is entirely valid. The source actually says "up to twenty-five...". Anyway, I've removed the words "twenty-six" so that it basically says that the loser of a shoot the moon just incurs "penalty points as normal". Potentially up to twenty-five! Thanks for pointing that out. Bermicourt (talk) 13:52, 12 February 2021 (UTC)

Shooting the Moon
I want to point out 'Shoot the Moon' is a term for several other card games. Jokem (talk) 19:20, 20 March 2022 (UTC)

"Hearts" name
I bolded the word "Hearts" in the paragraph containing all the other (bolded) alternate names for the game, and User:Bermicourt unbolded this with the reasoning "I think it's probably best not to put a name in bold that is strictly incorrect and will potentially cause confusion." I would argue that quite the opposite is true. Seeing "Hearts" here will reassure people who know the game by that name that they've come to the right place, which is exactly what bolding is supposed to do.

Saying that the name "Hearts" is strictly incorrect is wishful thinking. The name "Hearts" is used for this game by millions of people. To give just one example, the book Win at Hearts is entirely about this game, with the non-queen-of-spades variant mentioned only in the history chapter. This may be confusing, but the same name really is used for two different games. Wikipedia needs to be descriptive, not prescriptive. Dan Bloch (talk) 16:18, 27 July 2022 (UTC)


 * I'm not going to die in a ditch over this, since there is certainly substance in what you're saying. However, I'd just make a couple of points. In saying that the name Hearts is strictly incorrect, the key word is "strictly". Even if lots of people use a name, that doesn't necessarily make it right. Also I agree that Wikipedia is descriptive; but it's descriptive of WP:RS, not mass opinion. Having researched RS in some depth, the truth is that the majority of card game authors understand the difference – and the distinction is worth making – but certainly not all do. And then there are the software firms who neither understand nor care, but are major opinion formers. So go ahead and rebold it if you feel strongly. At least, both articles make clear the provenance of these two excellent and closely related games and the potential naming confusion that has arisen. Above all, keep enjoying the game; that's the main thing! Cheers. Bermicourt (talk) 19:27, 27 July 2022 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the considered response. I went back and forth on this, but I think that having Hearts in bold will match readers' expectations, and the context ("The game is often called Hearts, although that is the proper name for the basic game...") will keep confusion to a minimum.  I've put back the boldface. Dan Bloch (talk) 21:57, 28 July 2022 (UTC)

Jack of Diamonds
Isn't there a variant of Hearts called "jack of diamonds"? In the variant, the one who ends the hand with the jack of diamonds gets to subtract 10 penalty points, even if someone shoots the moon. This makes all of the suits have a role in the game: the jack of diamonds reduces someone's score by 10, the 2 of clubs leads the first trick, the queen of spades gets 13 penalty points, and the hearts get the rest of the penalty points. 69.42.21.9 (talk) 01:09, 25 February 2023 (UTC)


 * I think it may be a form of Omnibus Hearts which is a variant mentioned in the article as a popular version of Hearts and described by Culbertson and, more recently, Arnold. Bermicourt (talk) 08:34, 25 February 2023 (UTC)