For what it is worth, I went to the other site you mentioned and played it on hard mode & shot the moon the first hand of the game. Then I though that was too easy so I looked and saw there was expert mode & tried that. Then I once again shot the moon first hand of the game and only managed to score 15 points on expert (and some of those were defensive / strategic to ensure others couldn’t shoot the moon).

So however that was coded even expert is quite easy.

I used to be in a job where we had down times where we played lots of cards (think fire station or military post as an example of job type) and played a ton of Hearts back in the day. The programming of the game on our site is decently challenging, but I find that more fun than shoot the moon at will sort of programming like so many other Hearts games have.

I think the aesthetics look nice on that other site you mentioned, but I like the programming of our game here more. The game here can be a bit tougher and sometimes frustrating, which is how I remember Hearts being when I played a lot about a decade ago.

If you cut your teeth playing on a game which was programmed to be super easy then it makes sense that you would find this game tougher and frustrating.

In almost any game in life most people typically learn more through losses than from winning, so celebrate the learning & improve your strategy. 🙂

If you enjoy easy wins then keep playing the easy wins version you played before.

If you want to get better at the game then play a more challenging version of it.

It is totally up to you what you are looking for in a game.