In many games of Hearts, the Jack of Diamonds is worth -10 points. But most mediocre players spend so much time fearing the Queen of Spades, they don't even think about the Jack. In games played by a set of mediocre players, the Jack will typically end up being won almost at random, at the very end of a hand. Give yourself a leg up on the mediocre players; take that Jack.

A lot of people are chuckling to themselves right now, thinking what an awful idea taking the Jack is -- it's so easy to get the Queen too. And, you know what, it is. But how bad would that be? If you get the Queen and the Jack, that's +3 points -- not a bad hand, under most circumstances. If you got just +3 every hand, don't you think you'd beat your friends?

And it's really even better than that, because, if that Jack is being won by chance, well, then each player is getting -10 points one out of every 4 hands -- about -2.5 points/hand. But if you get that Jack, you take it away from your opponents, and they don't get that average -2.5 points/hand. If you can take the Jack 2 out of every 4 hands, all of a sudden a single opponent is getting -10 points only about 5 times every 32 hands. That's a crazy number, but that means that, over those 32 hands, your opponent went from getting -80 points to getting -50 points -- a 30-point swing! 32 hands might reasonably be two games, so that means you just dropped 15 points -- a little more than one queen -- on every one of your opponents this game!