You asked
How do I set up the game?
Answered counted as answeredAsked with: Heartsbg-6887-en-1e
The setup for the game depends on the number of players and the specific variation being played: **General Setup** 1. Determine the number of players, which can be any number from two to six [1]. 2. Agree upon the value of the counters (stakes) before play begins [1]. 3. Arrange for a person to act as banker, from whom players may purchase counters (usually starting with 50 or 100) [2][1]. 4. Use a full pack of fifty-two cards [1]. 5. If playing with more than seven people, form two tables [1]. 6. For the choice of seats and cards, players draw from an outspread pack; the lowest cut has the first choice, followed by others in order [1]. 7. The player who cuts the lowest card takes the first deal, which then rotates to the left [1]. **Player-Specific Card Adjustments** * **Two-Handed Hearts:** Two players cut for the deal, thirteen cards are given to each one at a time, and the remainder of the pack is left face down on the table [3]. * **Three-Handed Hearts:** The deuce of spades is discarded from the pack, and seventeen cards are dealt to each player one at a time [3]. * **Five Players:** Both black deuces are laid aside [1]. * **Six Players:** All four deuces are discarded [1].
🔧 debug — where this ruling came from
- outcome
- ANSWERED — Answered
- corpus profile
- live
- answerer pin (deploy-frozen, attribution only)
- gemma4:26b think:false 5571076f3d70
- timings
- search 264 ms · ask 13176 ms · total 2024670 ms
- single-flight (PR-5)
- queued 2011221 ms · generation 13449 ms
- retrieval refs (raw)
- [{"page": 2, "score": 0.032787, "snippet": "If there are more than seven candidates for play, two tables must be formed. Players draw from an outspread pack for the choice of seats and cards, the lowest cut having the first choice, and the others following in their order. The player cutting the lowest card takes the first deal, which afterwar", "headingPath": "HEARTS.", "sharpsignalDocId": 222}, {"page": 17, "score": 0.032258, "snippet": "The cards are dealt 3-2-3 at a time. The eldest hand leads any card he pleases, and the others must follow suit if they can. If all follow suit, the highest card played wins the trick, which is turned face down, and the cards in it are dead. The winner leads for the next trick, and so on. But if any", "headingPath": "ENFLÉ, OR SCHWELLEN.", "sharpsignalDocId": 222}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.031746, "snippet": "For instance: A, B, C and D play. A takes three hearts; B and C five each, and D none. There being three players besides himself, A puts up three times three, or 9 counters. B and C put up 15 each, and D none; so that there are 39 in the pool. Each player then takes out of the pool 1 counter for eve", "headingPath": "HEARTS.", "sharpsignalDocId": 222}, {"page": 8, "score": 0.03125, "snippet": "A good player, after sorting his hand, carefully estimates its possibilities. The hand may be such that it is evidently impossible to avoid taking some hearts. The player must then decide whether he will play to give each of the others hearts, or will take them all himself. If he succeeds in either ", "headingPath": "SUGGESTIONS FOR GOOD PLAY.", "sharpsignalDocId": 222}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.030769, "snippet": "The player making the highest bid pays into the pool the amount he has bid. He then names the suit to be avoided, and leads for the first trick, regardless of his position with respect to the deal. The dealer's position is a great advantage, on account of its having the last bid. After the hand is p", "headingPath": "VARIETIES OF HEARTS.", "sharpsignalDocId": 222}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.030303, "snippet": "There are two ways of settling at the end of the hand, each of which has its good points. SWEEPSTAKE HEARTS. After the hand has been played, each player announces the number of hearts he has taken in, and pays into the pool one counter for each. All thirteen hearts having been paid for, any player h", "headingPath": "HEARTS.", "sharpsignalDocId": 222}, {"page": 10, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "Should he succeed in either object, he has another chance for his money. It is usually bad policy to return the suit opened by the original leader. He has picked that out as his safest suit, and although he may be the only one safe in it, by continuing it you are reducing your chances to two players", "headingPath": "SUGGESTIONS FOR GOOD PLAY.", "sharpsignalDocId": 222}, {"page": 3, "score": 0.029412, "snippet": "If any card is exposed by the dealer, the player to whom it is dealt may demand a new deal, provided he has not touched any of his cards. Any one dealing out of turn, or with the wrong cards, may be stopped before the last card is dealt. After that the deal stands good, and the packs, if changed, mu", "headingPath": "HEARTS.", "sharpsignalDocId": 222}]
- citations (raw)
- [{"page": 2, "quote": null, "headingPath": "HEARTS.", "sharpsignalDocId": 222}, {"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "HEARTS.", "sharpsignalDocId": 222}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "VARIETIES OF HEARTS.", "sharpsignalDocId": 222}]
- boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3)
-
no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 222 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 222 boosted
- answered-before recall
-
this ruling was answered, so past rulings were not offered
similarity threshold in force: 0.55 (rulesage.answered-before.similarity-threshold; the exact-question tier is not gated by it)
- debug row retained until
- Nov 6, 2026 14:44
retrieval — what the search arm returned
score = the fused retrieval score (reciprocal-rank fusion over the search arms) — NOT a cosine similarity. This ruling ran the THREE-ARM fuse (full-text + vector + the doc-priority boost arm, which carried the base rulebook and/or the errata corrections this query matched), whose arithmetic ceiling is 0.04918 — all three arms ranking the same chunk #1 (ceiling = arms/(k+1) at k=60). The measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 was measured on TWO-arm asks and does not bound this one: its high end is the two-arm ceiling, and a third arm has room above it. A chunk only one arm ranked highly lands near 0.016 (that one arm's #1 vote), so 0.03 here is an excellent hit, not a 3% match.
per-arm ranks (the rank each search arm gave a chunk): NOT DISCLOSED by the gateway. Fusion happens gateway-side and only the FUSED score crosses the wire, so rulesage cannot show them without a gateway change. The rank column below is the FUSED rank (position in the returned list), which is real.
token count per chunk: NOT DISCLOSED — chunk token counts are not reported on the ask path. The character counts below are of the bounded snippet/quote rulesage actually received — a real measurement of what we hold, never an estimate of the chunk.
| fused rank | document | heading | page | fused RRF score | snippet chars |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| #1 | RULEBOOK Hearts — Rulebook (corpus doc 222) | HEARTS. | p.2 | 0.032787 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one)) | 300 |
| #2 | RULEBOOK Hearts — Rulebook (corpus doc 222) | ENFLÉ, OR SCHWELLEN. | p.17 | 0.032258 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one)) | 300 |
| #3 | RULEBOOK Hearts — Rulebook (corpus doc 222) | HEARTS. | p.3 | 0.031746 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one)) | 300 |
| #4 | RULEBOOK Hearts — Rulebook (corpus doc 222) | SUGGESTIONS FOR GOOD PLAY. | p.8 | 0.03125 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one)) | 300 |
| #5 | RULEBOOK Hearts — Rulebook (corpus doc 222) | VARIETIES OF HEARTS. | p.6 | 0.030769 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one)) | 300 |
| #6 | RULEBOOK Hearts — Rulebook (corpus doc 222) | HEARTS. | p.3 | 0.030303 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one)) | 300 |
| #7 | RULEBOOK Hearts — Rulebook (corpus doc 222) | SUGGESTIONS FOR GOOD PLAY. | p.10 | 0.029851 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one)) | 300 |
| #8 | RULEBOOK Hearts — Rulebook (corpus doc 222) | HEARTS. | p.3 | 0.029412 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one)) | 300 |
chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited
token count per chunk: NOT DISCLOSED — chunk token counts are not reported on the ask path. The character counts below are of the bounded snippet/quote rulesage actually received — a real measurement of what we hold, never an estimate of the chunk.
| # | document | heading | page | quote chars |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| [1] | RULEBOOK Hearts — Rulebook (corpus doc 222) | HEARTS. | p.2 | no quote on the wire |
| [2] | RULEBOOK Hearts — Rulebook (corpus doc 222) | HEARTS. | p.3 | no quote on the wire |
| [3] | RULEBOOK Hearts — Rulebook (corpus doc 222) | VARIETIES OF HEARTS. | p.5 | no quote on the wire |
generation — timing and the path taken
- timing split
- retrieval 264 ms · first delta 11276 ms · total 2024670 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
- full breakdown
- queued 2011221 ms · retrieval 264 ms · ask 13176 ms · gateway work 13449 ms · total 2024670 ms
- tokens in (the prompt the answerer read)
- 4624
- tokens out (what the answerer generated)
- 310
- tok/sec
- 145.6 tok/sec — 310 output tokens in 2.129 s of generation
- live seat (read from the running child)
- answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 38s ago)
- stream path
- streamed — the gateway pushed at least one accumulated draft
- watchdog
- first-token watchdog: 30s per arming window (rulesage.table.first-token-watchdog-seconds), re-armed once by the passages frame — so the worst case before a reader falls back to polling is 60s. Whether it actually fired is a BROWSER-side decision that never reaches the server, so it is not recorded here. The stream path above is the server's half of that story: whether a delta was emitted at all.
- num_ctx · think posture
- both are the CHILD's settings, not rulesage's, and no ask reply carries them — an answer never states which context window or think posture produced it. The live-seat line above reads them from the running child instead, where the gateway can answer for itself; it describes the child NOW, not this ask.
disposition
- outcome
- ANSWERED — Answered
- abstain rationale (n/a — this ruling answered)
- answered — no abstain rationale applies
setup-shape — why the checklist band did or didn't render
- decision
- NO_APPROVED_CHECKLIST — setup-shaped, but no approved setup checklist exists for this game
- pattern that matched
- SETUP — "setup" / "set up"
- matched words (in the normalized question)
-
set up
errata registry — what the gate above had to match against
this game registers NO errata cards (edition 148), so "no registered errata card matched" above could never have matched one
Errata scope: the gate above matched this ruling's own edition only. When an ask also reads an expansion, that expansion's own registered errata cards stay outside the match — a stated phase-1 limitation, not a failed lookup.