Baloot

How to play

1. Everyone gets five cards and one card is turned face up in the middle. Play goes anticlockwise.
2. Bidding starts. Hokom makes the face-up card's suit trump, Sun has no trump, and Ashkal is Sun with the face-up card going to the caller's partner. Sun or Ashkal ends the bidding at once. To pass, say Bas.
3. If everyone passes, a second round follows, where Hokom may name a suit other than the face-up one, and a pass is Wala. If nobody buys, the cards are dealt again.
4. The buyer takes the face-up card and the deal is completed to eight cards each. The winner of the bidding leads first.
5. Follow the suit led while you can. In Hokom, if you cannot follow and an opponent is winning the trick, you must trump.
6. Card strength in Sun and in suits that are not trump: Ace, Ten, King, Queen, Jack, Nine, Eight, Seven. In trump: Jack, Nine, Ace, Ten, King, Queen, Eight, Seven.
7. Projects are declared with your first card: Sira is three in a row in one suit, Fifty is four, Hundred is five, or four Kings, Queens, Jacks or Tens, and Four Hundred is the four Aces in Sun. Baloot is the trump King and Queen in one hand.

Scoring and winning

• Abnat are the card points your team took. In Hokom divide by ten, so 86 makes 9, out of 16 for the hand. In Sun divide by ten and double, so 65 makes 13, out of 26 for the hand.
• Only the team with the best project scores its projects; if the best two are equal, the team whose player sits nearest the dealer's left.
• If the buyers lose, the hand's points, the projects and the Baloot go to the other team, and the buyers score nothing.
• Kaboot is taking every trick: 44 in Sun and 25 in Hokom, plus projects.
• Doubling in Hokom goes Double, Three, Four, then Gahwa, whose winner takes the whole game. Sun has Double only.
• The first team to 152 wins the game.