Baloot

The aim of the game

A match is a race to 152 points. It is played in rounds, each round is eight tricks, and at the end of every round each team takes the points it made and adds them to its total. The first team to reach 152 wins the match.

Every round has a buyer: a team that has undertaken to score more in that round than its opponents. If it does, it keeps what it scored. If it does not, it has fallen, and the opponents take the whole round.

The cards and their strength

Baloot is played with 32 cards: four suits (hearts, diamonds, spades, clubs) of eight cards each, from 7 up to the ace. There are no cards from 2 to 6.

The strength of the cards is not the same in every round. It changes with the contract the round was bought under:

• The ordinary order (under sun, and in every suit that is not the trump): the ace is highest, then the 10, then the king, then the queen, then the jack, then 9, 8, 7. Note that the ten is stronger than the king and the queen — this is what beginners get wrong most often.
• The trump order (in the trump suit only): the order turns over. The jack becomes the strongest card in the game, then the 9, then the ace, then the 10, then the king, then the queen, then 8, then 7.

Every card also carries a value, called abnat, and it is these that are counted at the end of the round:

• Jack: 2 abnat in an ordinary suit, and 20 if it is the trump suit.
• 9: nothing in an ordinary suit, and 14 if it is the trump suit.
• Ace: 11 abnat, trump or not.
• 10: 10 abnat, trump or not.
• King: 4 abnat, trump or not.
• Queen: 3 abnat, trump or not.
• 8 and 7: nothing, trump or not.

So one ordinary suit holds 30 abnat and the trump suit holds 62. Another 10 abnat go to whoever takes the last trick, which makes a whole round 130 abnat under sun and 162 under hokum.

The deal and the land

• The cards are shuffled and each player is dealt three cards and then two, so everyone holds five cards only.
• Then one card is turned face up in front of everybody. It is called the land. Everyone sees it, and the bidding is built on it.
• Once the round has been bought the deal is completed: the buyer takes the land and two more cards, everybody else takes three, and all four hands end on eight cards.
• The deal moves round: every round the deal passes one seat. The player who speaks first, and later plays first, is always the one to the dealer's right, and the dealer speaks last.

The buy (bidding)

The buy is the heart of Baloot and the part that confuses anyone playing it for the first time. It means simply this: one of you undertakes that his team will score more in this round than the other team — and you undertake it having seen only five of your cards, judging by what you hold and by the face-up land.

The asking starts with the player to the dealer's right and goes round, and each player chooses one of these calls:

• Pass: I do not want to buy; put it to somebody else.
• Hokum: I buy the round, and the suit of the land becomes the trump. The trump suit is a powerful thing: any card of it beats any card of another suit however high, and its jack and its nine become the two strongest cards in the game.
• Sun: I buy the round with no trump at all — every suit is equal, and nothing beats the led suit except a higher card of it. Sun is stronger than hokum, so whoever calls it takes the buy away from whoever called hokum.
• Ashkal: a sun in every respect except one — the land goes to your partner instead of to you. You call it when your hand is strong without needing the land, so you make a present of it to your partner. It is offered only to the dealer and the player who bids immediately before them.
• Second hokum: appears in the second round of asking only. It means: I buy with a trump of my own choosing, and it may not be the suit of the land. You name it after the doubling has finished, not before, so that your opponents decide whether to double without knowing your suit.
• Qablak: the call that steals the buy from an opponent. When a sun or an ashkal settles on somebody, qablak is offered to the player who bid immediately before them — always an opponent — and if he calls it, the buy moves to his team in the shape it was made: a sun stays a sun, and a stolen ashkal stays an ashkal, so its land goes to the thief's partner. One call only, and there is no stealing back.

How the buy runs, step by step

1. The four are asked in order from the dealer's right. In the first round the offer is sun, hokum, pass — with ashkal as well for the last two seats.
2. If somebody calls sun or ashkal, the buy ends there and nobody after them is asked, because sun is the strongest call.
3. If somebody calls hokum, it does not settle it. It is put to the other three, one after another, starting with the player after him and wrapping round even to those who have already passed. Each of them may take it with a sun, double it if he is on the opposing team, or pass.
4. If all three pass, the question returns to the player who called the hokum: he either confirms it or turns it into a sun.
5. If all four pass in the first round, a second round of asking begins, offering sun, second hokum and pass (with ashkal for the last two seats).
6. And if nobody buys in the second round either, the whole deal is thrown in and dealt again by the next dealer.

An example of a buy

Karam is the dealer and the land is the jack of clubs. The order is: Adam to Karam's right, then Ahmed, then Yasser, then Karam. Adam and Yasser are a team, Ahmed and Karam are a team.

1. Adam has a middling hand and says pass.
2. Ahmed holds four clubs including the ace and the ten, and says hokum — so clubs would be the trump.
3. The buy does not end here. Yasser is asked: sun, double or pass. His hand cannot carry it, so he says pass.
4. Karam is asked, and as Ahmed's partner he may not double his own side, so his offer is sun, ashkal or pass. He says pass.
5. Adam is asked again — yes, even though he passed at the start — and his offer is sun, double or pass. He says pass.
6. The question returns to Ahmed, who confirms his hokum. The round is bought as a hokum on clubs, the land goes to him with two more cards, and the others take three each.

Double, triple, four and coffee

Doubling is a bet on the buy itself: your opponent has bought, you believe he will not make it, so you multiply what the round is worth. It exists under hokum and second hokum only.

• Double: called by an opponent of the buyer, and the round becomes worth twice as much. It is offered inside the asking itself, so whoever is asked about an opponent's hokum finds "double" in front of him.
• Triple: the buyer's answer to whoever doubled him, and the round becomes worth three times as much.
• Four: the doubler's answer to the triple, and the round becomes worth four times as much.
• Coffee: the top of the ladder and the most dangerous rung. Whoever wins this round wins the whole match on the spot whatever the scores are — and not necessarily the player who called it.

• The raising is between two players, not four: the one who doubled is the only one asked about the four, and the one who bought is the only one asked about the triple and the coffee. Neither partner is dragged into the bet.
• The first refusal ends the ladder: refuse the triple and the round stays at double; refuse the four and it stays at triple, and so on.
• A double settles the buy: once a hokum has been doubled, the player who called it is no longer asked to confirm it — the double has fixed it on him.

Open and locked

This is a restriction on how the round is played, not on what it is worth:

• Open: you may lead a trump card whenever you like.
• Locked: you may not open a trick with a trump unless you hold nothing else. Opening means being the first to put a card into the trick.
• Who decides: whoever calls double or four chooses open or locked, and the later choice is the one that stands. But triple and coffee — which come from the buying side — always open the round, with no choice about it. If nobody doubles at all, the round is open.

Doubling a sun

A sun is doubled in one situation only: the buying team is above 100 points and the other team below 100 on the match score. Then the trailing team is offered a single double, and there is no triple, four or coffee after it.

Playing the tricks

Once the buy has settled and the hands are complete at eight cards, eight tricks are played. A trick is one card from each of the four players, and all four cards go to whoever played the strongest of them.

• Who opens: the first trick is opened by the player to the dealer's right, whether or not he bought. After that, every trick is opened by whoever took the one before it.
• Who takes it: the strongest card of the led suit — the suit of the first card played — unless a trump has been put into the trick, in which case the trump beats every suit and the highest trump takes it.

What you are allowed to play

You are not always free to choose your card. The rules, in order:

1. If you hold the led suit you must play it, and you may not play another suit even when it would suit you better.
2. Covering, under hokum: if you are following the led suit in a hokum round and you hold a card higher than the highest card of that suit already played, you must play it. Under sun you may play any card of the led suit.
3. Trumping: if you do not hold the led suit and an opponent is winning the trick, you must cut it with a trump — and with the highest trump you hold.
4. If you hold neither the led suit nor a trump you are free to play whatever you like.

Two cases in trumping that many players get wrong

• A trump that cannot take the trick is not owed: if somebody has already cut the trick with a trump before you, look at your own. If yours is higher than his, you must play it and overtake him. If yours is lower, then nothing is required of you at all — you are free to play any card, even from another suit, and you do not waste a trump that would take nothing.
• A partner who is ahead is not always winning: when your partner holds the strongest card played so far you are free — but only if his win is certain: either you are the last to play in this trick, or every card of the led suit above his has already been played in this round. As long as somebody after you can still beat your partner's card, you must trump.

An example of trumping

The round is a hokum with diamonds as trump, and the seating is as in the earlier example: Adam and Yasser are a team, Ahmed and Karam are a team. Adam opens the trick with the jack of clubs, then Ahmed of the opposing team plays the 9 of clubs. It is now Yasser's turn — Adam's partner — and he holds no clubs, but he does hold the king of diamonds:

1. His partner Adam is winning the trick at this moment with the jack of clubs.
2. But the ace, ten, king and queen of clubs have not been played yet, and after Yasser comes Karam of the opposing team, who could take the trick with any one of them.
3. So the partner's win is not certain, and Yasser must cut with the king of diamonds to make the trick safe for his team.
4. Had Yasser been the last to play in this trick, he would have been entirely free, because nobody would play after him.

Projects

A project is a combination of cards that comes together in your hand at the deal and earns you extra points, regardless of who takes the tricks. There are five of them:

• Sara: three cards in sequence in one suit. Worth 4 points under sun and 2 under hokum.
• Fifty: four cards in sequence in one suit. Worth 10 points under sun and 5 under hokum.
• Hundred: five cards in sequence in one suit, or four cards of the same rank (four kings, for instance). Worth 20 points under sun and 10 under hokum.
• Four hundred: all four aces together. Worth 40 points, and under sun only — under hokum they count as a hundred.
• Bloot: the king and queen of the trump suit in one hand. Worth 2 points, and under hokum only.

• Sequences run in the natural order: in projects the cards run 7, 8, 9, 10, jack, queen, king, ace — not the play order. So "9, 10, jack" is a proper sequence.
• One card serves one project: a card is never counted in two projects, and no player scores more than two projects from his hand.

The project battle

Projects are not scored by everyone who holds one. They are scored by one team only: the team holding the strongest project on the table. That team scores every project it holds, and the other team loses all of its own, however good they were.

It runs in two stages:

1. In the first trick every holder announces the name of his project only, without showing his cards, so the whole table hears what is out there.
2. In the second trick the holder of the strongest project lays his projects out, and his partner lays out theirs with him, cards and all, and they are scored. The other team lays out nothing.

If two projects are equally strong, the one with the highest card in it wins; if they are still equal, the player closest to the dealer's right wins it.

An example of the project battle

Adam has a hundred, Ahmed has a sara, Yasser has a sara, and Karam has a fifty. Adam and Yasser are a team; Ahmed and Karam are a team.

1. In the first trick all four announce the names of their projects, showing nothing.
2. The strongest project on the table is Adam's hundred, so his team wins the battle.
3. In the second trick Adam lays out his hundred, and Yasser lays out his sara with him — the team's projects are all scored.
4. Ahmed loses his sara and Karam loses his fifty, and neither scores anything.

Bloot alone stands outside this battle: whoever holds it takes his two points even if his team loses the battle. And it announces itself when the second of its two cards is played, not at the start of the round.

Scoring

At the end of the round each team's score is worked out, in this order:

1. The abnat are counted in the tricks the team took.
2. 10 abnat are added for whoever took the last trick.
3. The abnat are converted into points, and the conversion differs between sun and hokum:
   • Under sun: the abnat are rounded to the nearest ten (a total ending in 5 is left as it is), then doubled and divided by ten. A whole round comes to 26 points.
   • Under hokum: the abnat are divided by ten and a remainder of 5 or less is dropped. A whole round comes to 16 points.
4. Project points are added after the conversion — they are points, not abnat.
5. Only then is the fall decided.

• The fall: if the opponents scored more than the buyer, the buyer has fallen: he takes nothing, and the opponents take the whole round — 26 under sun or 16 under hokum — together with their own projects.
• A project can save you from falling, because it is counted before the fall is decided. A buyer on 12 points holding a fifty is on 22, and has not fallen.
• Kaboot: one team taking all eight tricks. It scores 44 points under sun or 25 under hokum, and the other team takes nothing.
• A tie: if the two teams come out level with no doubling, each keeps its points. In a doubled round the buyer takes everything.
• What doubling does: in a doubled round the whole value of the round, multiplied, goes to the winner of the round alone, and the loser takes nothing. Added to it are all the projects on the table — the loser's included — added after the multiplication, so they are never multiplied.
• Coffee: whoever wins a coffee round wins the whole match on the spot, whether he called it or his opponent did.

An example of scoring a round

The round is a hokum bought by Ahmed and Karam's team, with no doubling and no projects:

1. Ahmed's team collected 92 abnat in its tricks, and took the last trick, which makes 102.
2. The other team collected 60 abnat.
3. The hokum conversion is a division by ten: Ahmed's team, 102 ÷ 10 = 10 points (the remainder of 2 is dropped); the other team, 60 ÷ 10 = 6 points.
4. The buyer scored more, so he has not fallen. Ahmed's team takes 10 points and the other team takes 6.

Had the other team collected more, Ahmed's team would have fallen and taken nothing, and the opponents would have taken the full 16 points.

Controls and shortcuts

The iPhone gesture is always the Android one with three fingers instead of two.

In your hand, alongside your cards, there are two entries you can press at any time:

• The contract: tells you what the round was bought as, what the trump is if there is one, whether the round is open or locked, and what it is being multiplied by.
• The declared projects: tells you who declared, and what they declared.

Notes

• The cards in your hand are always in order: each suit together, and within a suit from lowest to highest.
• Your card is read out to you as you play it, and so is every card the others play. A trump has a sound of its own when it is played, so you know the trick has turned over without having to ask.
• The cards taken in earlier tricks are not read back to you, because at a real table they are stacked face down in front of whoever won them and nobody can see them. Remembering them is part of the game.
• If you try to play a card that is not allowed, it is refused quietly, the turn stays with you, and nothing in your hand changes.
• Projects are found and announced for you automatically, and bloot announces itself when you play the second of its two cards — you never have to remember to claim them.
• A table needs exactly four players, and you may fill empty seats with bots. The first real player at the table chooses his partner, and the seating is then rebuilt so that partners sit opposite one another.