Hearts: the 26-point hand and how it happened
The scoreboard showed 26 next to my name and zeros everywhere else. My neighbour whistled and asked why I had tried so hard to lose.
The hand that went upside down
It started with the pass. Three high spades landed in my hand in a row, and it looked like a sentence: queen, king, ace. Nobody to dump them on. I took the first trick with the two of clubs, and then it rolled on. Hearts broke early, and every led suit kept landing in my lap on other people's high cards.
The moment I stopped dodging
Halfway through, four hearts and the queen of spades were already on my pile. Then it clicked: too late to back out. Since the tricks kept coming to me anyway, I might as well take the remaining hearts too. I started leading high cards on purpose so opponents would shed low ones while the tricks stayed mine. I laid the ace of hearts myself, as the final chord.
Why zero beats ten
Shooting the moon flips the score: whoever collects all 26 gets zero for the hand, and each of the three opponents gets 26. My ten likely points turned into everyone else's disaster. The game runs to 100, and one such run reshapes the whole table.
What I do with the queen of spades now
I hold her until opponents run out of the led suit. I dump her on someone else's trick when the hand turns against me. And when high spades and hearts stick to my fingers on their own, I count the tricks and go for all of them.