What is the maximum number of hands in a game of Hearts?

Answer 1

In traditional 100-point Hearts, with the Queen of Spades worth 13 points, hearts worth 1 point, and Shooting the Moon possible (taking all 13 penalty cards), a game can last at most 16 hands.

However, this is virtually never seen in an actual game, since 15 hands generates 390 penalty points and no player can have more than 99 points. An example would be cumulative scores of 93-99-99-99 or 96-96-99-99.

The maximum total after 16 hands is 416 points, and it is possible that all 4 players could go over 100 after 16 hands, and there could be a 4-way tie at 104 each. If a player "shoots the moon" on the 16th hand, three players would go over 100 and the total cumulative points would be 468.