Klaverjassen: Gambling or Relax?

Card games have always been popular among all nations all over the world. Probably, the first card game appeared when the first nation developed on the Earth, and they didn’t know what to do in the evening. As card games are the easiest to play, their first discovery were cards, I think. Considerably, the first and the most popular card games became trick-taking ones.

One of such point trick games, klaverjassen, originated from Netherlands. Actually, klaverjassen is one of the games in Netherlands, which are played by people all ages. When you go to a café or a pub, it is easy to notice there a lot of groups of players, who are enjoying klaverjassen. Usually, the players are friendly and invite strangers to play with them.

In fact, the rules of klaverjassen are very simple to learn, but there are many variations of the game, which aren’t so easy to remember. Also, all good players of klaverjassen are supposed to know the signaling tricks, as the game is played in pairs. Therefore, it’s not enough to learn the rules to become a good klaverjassen player. You have to know a lot of small but important things behind the rules.

Due to the popularity of klaverjassen, it’s not only played for fun, but also for the victory and for money. Usually there are 16 rounds of klaverjassen, played with the same 3 people. When it’s a tournament held, you play with 50 different people, and must play with every participant of this tournament. Usually, bids are not high, like several dollars. However, you can win a hundred dollars, or something like that. Thus, you can even earn some money playing klaverjassen, if you like this way of making money.

Traditional Way of Playing Klaverjassen

As the game originated with the major aim to entertain people, it has been always played by friends and family members. During quiet family evenings, families gathered together and played klaverjassen. Parents and children, grandparents and grandchildren enjoyed the company and learnt something new.

Today we cannot afford ourselves these quiet evenings, but we tend to spend the weekends or at least holidays this way. Certainly, it’s not an easy deal to find the game, which would be interesting to all family members. In Netherlands it’s not a problem. Family gets a pack of cards and a table, and starts to play!

Jan Kaas is specialized in writing about klaverjassen and online klaverjassen.