It is named after its highest penalty card, the queen of spades or "black lady".

It is a trick-avoidance game in which the aim is to avoid taking tricks containing hearts or the black lady.

American author and leading bridge exponent, Ely Culbertson, describes it as "essentially hearts with the addition of the queen of spades as a minus card, counting thirteen" and goes on to say that "black lady and its elaborations have completely overshadowed the original hearts in popularity".

[5] It is sometimes misnamed black Maria which, however, is the British variant of hearts played with additional penalty cards.

Scoring was simple: one penalty point for every heart captured and thirteen for the queen of spades.

The aim of black lady is to avoid capturing heart cards or the queen of spades.

If more than one player takes no hearts, they divide the pool, any odd counters staying put.

In the 'Howell' method, at the end of each deal, players pay into the pool per opponent as many counters as they took hearts.

Once everyone had paid up, players claim as many counters as they did not hold at the end (26 minus the number of penalty points scored).

The following rules are based on those by American bridge expert, Ely Culbertson, where it is described as a separate game that is "essentially Hearts with the addition of the queen of spades as a minus card, counting thirteen".

However, he omitted to mention that it also differed in retaining the discard or passing feature of Black Lady/Discard Hearts.

Culbertson includes a slam, first introduced by Phillips in 1939, but this time no points are scored for it.

The standard deck is used and an even distribution of cards is achieved by removing as many of the following as are needed: 2♣, 2♦, 3♣ and 2♠.

After the deal each player selects three cards to discard and passes them to the left-hand neighbour.

[2] Card play follows the normal rules: eldest hand leads to the first trick.

[9] Unlike the basic game of hearts, card passing has always been a feature of black lady.

There are several sub-variations to these rules: A player who takes no tricks scores –5 penalty points.

"[17] In effect, omnibus hearts is really a variant of black lady to which has been added the bonus card of the 10♦ which earns 10 plus points for the player who takes it in a trick.

He refers to the capture of all counting cards as "hitting the moon, take-all or slam".

[13] Black jack is recorded by Foster as early as 1909 and has appeared sporadically in the literature since.

[c] The J♠ takes the place of the black lady but is worth 10 hearts or penalty points instead of thirteen.

[21] In early rules, the black jack may be discarded if its holder is void in the suit led.

[22] In later rules, the black jack must be discarded before any other card if the player is void in the led suit.

Generally speaking, it is advantageous to play the highest card possible without winning the trick.

In contrast, if they only had A♠, then they would be forced to play the A♠ the first time spades were led, with the risk that another player will respond with Q♠.

A♠ and K♠ are two of the most important cards to get rid of, because they are not worth any points themselves but are ranked higher than Q♠ and as such would force players to take the queen if ♠ are lead.

When creating voids, it is best to do that in either clubs or diamonds, because players want to avoid receiving high hearts or spades without having any padding.

For this reason, spades lower than the queen are typically not passed unless the player is attempting to shoot the moon.

Generally, this is a highly advantageous situation, because it prevents the player from winning any points in that suit, and provides a means to dispose of poor cards.

Shooting the moon can rapidly change the direction of a game in a player's favour.