Agony Aunt uses a standard deck of cards with one joker, a board which is a 3x3 grid and 68 counters in 4 colors. This is a relative of Hearts, the goal is to avoid catching any of the nine possible penalties contained in or consisting certain tricks. Every penalty means the player has to put a counter on the appropriate place of the board. These are lost at the end of the round, and every player lose an additional counter for every row her counters form on the board. When a player puts her last counter on the board, the game ends and the winner is the player with the most counters remaining.