Hearts is an evasion-type card game, which means it's all about evading the tricks that in more conventional game--like Bridge, say, or Pinochle--you'd be trying your hardest to take.

In fact, Hearts is not just AN evasion-type card game. It's pretty much THE evasion-type card game, having rocketed to popularity in 1992 when Microsoft started including a free version in Windows.

On the off chance that you didn't manage to squeeze in a game before now, here's what Hearts is all about.

Based on an old Spanish card game called Reversis, Hearts involves four players competing to not win any tricks--or, at least, not win any tricks with Hearts in them.

That's because each Heart is worth one penalty point, and the more penalty points you accrue, the closer you get to the fatal 100-point line. As soon as a player accumulates 100 points, the game is over and victory is awarded to whoever has the lowest score.

Confusingly, there's a worse card to collect than a Heart. The Queen of Spades represents a massive 13 points, so it's worth trying extra hard not to end up with her on your pile.

And if you're feeling exceptionally heroic you can try and Shoot for the Moon. This high-risk maneuver involves collecting all of the Hearts and the Queen of Spades in order to score zero points while your opponents all have to swallow 26.

If you hadn't worked it out yet, Hearts is an absolute blast, with an unusual mechanic that forces you to come with a whole new set of tactics and strategies.

You owe it to yourself to check it out, and that means you owe it to yourself to head to heartsgame.com, a site dedicated to nothing else but Hearts.

Here you'll find an incredibly intuitive, slickly presented version of the game with custom decks, a range of difficulty levels, and a wealth of insights into the history of Hearts and how to play it well.

To commence your newest card game obsession, head to heartsgame.com right now.