Baloot

The game has its origin in france and has recently found great popularity in the middle east, especially in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. The game is played by 4 players using a normal deck of cards. All the cards of rank 6 and lower from all suits are removed and not used in play. The jokers are also removed, which leaves 32 cards in the game with each player getting 8 cards in his hand.

The two players facing each other work as a team to win as many high ranking cards as possible. While the goal of games like kout and spades is to win as many rounds in a single hand, Balot differs slightly in that the goal is not to win as many rounds as possible, but to win the rounds in which high ranking cards are played in. As such, cards are associated with point value, and winning as many cards with high values by winning the rounds they are played in would win you the game.

Round:

When each player plays a single card, winning the round follows rules similar to spades and kout which are detailed in this document, but the points won in each round depend on the cards that are played during the round. This is also referred to as a "Trick"

Hand:

A hand is complete when 12 rounds are played (i.e., all cards held by all players are played), the team with the highest number of collected points wins the hand and scoring is determined based on rules that we will explain in the document.

Game:

A game is completed when a team accumulates 151 points in total, beating the other team.

San:

When the bidding team chooses to play the current hand with no trump suit.

Hokom:

When the bidding team chooses a suit to be played as a trump for the current hand. Hokom literally means suit.

Ashkal:

Is a special kind of non-trump bid (San), in which the card the players are bidding on goes to the team mate instead of the bidding player.

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Points

Points collected from round win are calculated as follows based on the cards won in each round:

For all suits (except a trump suit in Hokom game)

A: 11 points

10: 10 points

K: 4 points

Q: 3 points

J: 2 points

9 & 7 & 8: 0 points

For the trump suit only:

J: 20 points

9: 14 points

A: 11 points

10: 10 points

K: 4 points

Q: 3 points

7 & 8: 0 points