العربية

Baloot Rules — The Complete Guide

Everything you need to play standard Saudi Baloot: the deck, the deal, bidding, Sun vs Hokum card rankings, projects, and scoring to 152. New to the game? Start with the gentler how to play Baloot walkthrough first.

1. The basics

• Players: 4, in two fixed partnerships. Partners sit opposite each other.
• Deck: 32 cards — 7, 8, 9, 10, J, Q, K, A in each of the four suits. Everything below the 7 is removed.
• Direction: dealing and play proceed counterclockwise.
• Goal: the first team to reach 152 game points across multiple hands wins the match.

Each hand has three acts: a deal with a face-up card, a short bidding phase that decides the mode (Sun or Hokum) and which team "buys" the hand, then eight tricks of card play followed by counting.

2. The deal

1. The dealer gives every player five cards (commonly in a 3-then-2 rhythm).
2. One card is turned face up in the middle. This card drives the bidding.
3. After someone buys, the hands are completed to eight cards each: the buyer takes the face-up card plus two more from the deck, and everyone else receives three.

3. Bidding — who buys, and in what mode?

Starting with the player to the dealer's right, each player in turn may pass or claim the hand:

• First round: a player may say Hokum — taking the face-up card and making its suit trump — or say Sun, taking the card to play with no trump at all. A Sun call outranks a Hokum call: if a later player declares Sun, Sun takes the hand.
• Second round: if all four passed, the bidding goes around once more, and now a player may call Hokum in a suit other than the face-up card's suit.
• All pass twice: the cards are thrown in and the next dealer redeals.

The player who claims the hand is the buyer (المشتري), and their team takes on a real obligation: if the buying team fails to outscore the defenders, it loses the whole hand's points (see scoring below). Many tables also play extra calls around bidding — Ashkal (أشكل) and the doubling ladder (Double/دبل and beyond). These are common variants whose exact conditions differ from table to table, so agree on them before you start.

4. Sun vs Hokum — card rankings and points

This table is the heart of Baloot. In Hokum, the trump suit ranks J first and 9 second; the three non-trump suits rank exactly like Sun. In Sun there is no trump and every suit uses the same order:

So the trump suit in Hokum is worth 62 card points on its own, each other suit 30 — a total of 152 card points in Hokum, which is where the famous target number comes from. In Sun the four suits total 120.

5. Playing the tricks

• The player to the dealer's right leads the first trick; play continues counterclockwise.
• You must follow suit if you can.
• In Hokum, if you cannot follow suit you must play a trump if you hold one — at most tables with the well-known mercy: if your partner is already winning the trick, you may discard instead (a common variant; some tables play stricter).
• The highest card of the led suit wins the trick — unless trumps were played in Hokum, in which case the highest trump wins. The trick winner leads the next.
• Eight tricks are played; the team that takes the last trick earns a 10-point bonus (often called "the floor", الأرض).

6. Projects (المشاريع) — declared combinations

If your dealt hand contains certain card combinations, you can declare them on the first trick for bonus points, revealing them when the second trick begins. Sequences use the order A-K-Q-J-10-9-8-7 within one suit:

When both teams declare, the table compares the strongest project on each side, and only the team holding the better one scores its projects — the common rule, though tie-breaking details vary. The values above are the most common scoring; some regions count projects slightly differently, so treat the exact numbers as a common variant and agree before playing. The game's very name comes from the little Baloot declaration — announced as you play the trump King and Queen.

7. Scoring — from card points to 152

1. After the eighth trick, each team adds up the card points it captured, plus 10 for the last trick, plus any project bonuses.
2. Card points convert to game points (الأبناط) by dividing by ten with conventional rounding, so a hand is worth 16 game points in Hokum and 26 in Sun in total (Sun counts double) — the common counting; exact rounding rituals differ slightly by table.
3. The buyer's burden: if the buying team's total does not beat the defenders', the buyers lose the buy (خسروا المشترى) and the entire hand's points go to the defenders.
4. Kaboot (كبوت): capturing all eight tricks scores a sweep bonus — commonly counted as 25 in Hokum and 44 in Sun.
5. The first team to reach 152 game points wins the match. (What happens if both teams cross 152 in the same hand is a classic table argument — many give it to the buying side, others to the higher total. Agree beforehand.)

8. Doubling and Gahwa (قهوة)

Most tables play an escalation ladder in Hokum: defenders may double (دبل) the hand's value, the buyers may redouble, and so on up — culminating in the legendary Gahwa (قهوة), where the winner of the hand wins the entire match outright, and tradition says the losers make the coffee. The exact steps and conditions of the ladder are a common variant that differs between regions; the spirit — raising the stakes when you're confident — is universal.

Frequently asked questions

Keep reading: How to play Baloot — beginner walkthrough · Baloot on Karooty · All Karooty games