Just to chime in as well, the hearts were actually added after the scoring was to... disincentivize spamming. I actually personally prefer it with the hearts in there, because then I know exactly how much leeway I have with trying to get a certain cut or not, though that's just my personal preference of course.
(my high score is 3089, so *barely* over 3000; the maximum score you can get is 4000 - there's 40 cuts, and you get up to 100 points per cut [though for 100 you'd have to be frame perfect])