How to play klaverjassen

You can’t compare the Dutch card game klaverjassen with any other card games out there. Some variants of the card game do exist. Because it’s a one of a kind game, it might seem hard to understand how to play it. It must be said however, that klaverjassen is quite an easy game to play and you wouldn’t be the first to learn how to play the game within a few hours during a nice evening with some friends or family. In this article you can find some basic information and a several rules of klaverjassen.

Klaverjassen is a game that is mostly played by four players even though some variations of the game exist where you can play the game with two, three or five players. The goal behind the game is to get more points than your opponent. The used cards have their own values. Each player receives eight cards when you play classic klaverjassen with four players. This means that in total there are 32 cards in the game since everything from the twos up to the sixes are not being used. 8 of the 32 cards are “troef”. The cards that are not in the game (2-6) are shuffled and put on a pile. As soon as each player has eight cards, one of the cards from the pile is turned face up. This is how the troef is determined. The troef plays an important part of the game since it is stronger than the other cards.

Once the troef is determined the player left of the dealer can say whether he will “play” or “pass”. If the person has a good hand with plenty of “troeven” the player can “play” which means that he must get more points than the other team to succeed. If he the player decides to pass then the next player can say it. It happens frequently that nobody will play on a certain troef which means that another troef has to be turned from the small pile of card. If nobody plays on the second troef the dealer must  gather and shuffle the cards again and deal over and a new troef must be turned. The team that eventually play must get more points than the other team and the other team can get any amount of points. If the playing team doesn’t get more points they lose and get 0 points and the other points go to the other team.

Once you know which team is playing the player left of the dealer must place one card on the table. The other players must play a card of the same kind. If they do not have a card of the same kind they must play a troef and if they don’t have a troef they can throw any other card. The troef is always higher than non-troef cards. The one with the highest card gets to take the four cards and these are piled up in front of the winner. Once eight hands are played the points are counted and notated. It’s important to learn the values of the cards and together with these basics you will do just fine in your first games of klaverjassen.

Additional articles about klaverjassen

About the author

Klaverjassen is a fun dutch website that offers online klaverjassen and all the necessary information and rules of this game to the fans.

Please Rate This Article

Select Rating Excellent Very Good Interesting Fair Could Use Improvement

Number of ratings: 0
Rating: 0