Klaverjassen is a dutch trick-taking card game for four players. The game is played with a standard deck of cards. The game is played with 32 cards. 8 cards from each of the four suits; ace, king, queen, jack and the numbers 7 - 10. Each player is dealt 8 cards in a 3-2-3 fashion.
During the game the four players play in two teams of two players. Here the “north” and “south” player play together, as well as the “east” and “west” players. A game consists of 16 rounds of 8 sets of cars being played. A set of cards is one round around the table and is called a “slag” or trick. The goal of the game is to gain as many points as possible. Points are gained from cards which are obtained from winning a trick. A player wins a trick when his card is the highest of the four cards in the middle. A card of the trump suit is always higher than any other card, and within a suit the highest card is determined according to table 1.
When playing a card, a player is bound by certain rules as to which card he is allowed to play. Players must follow suit if they can. If they can’t follow suit they have to play a trump-card. If there already is a trump-card on the table the player has to play a higher trump card. If this is also not possible, but the player does have a lower trump-card, he is not required to play this card when the high-trump belongs to his team-mate. In such a situation the player can play any card he wants, which makes “seinen” possible. A round of the game starts when, starting with the player next to the dealer, a player chooses to play on a certain trump suit. This player, and his team-mate, then have to score at least half of the points of that round.
In the game of klaverjassen there is the concept of “seinen”(signaling in English). With signaling, one player sends a signal to his partner by playing a certain card. There are a few different signals one can perform:
“Afseinen”: When a player has to play a suit, but has no cards of this suit in his hand, and the current highest card of the trick belongs to his partner. He can play a card that has a low amount of points to signal his partner that he has bad cards of the type he has just played. The cards that are used to do this are the King, Queen or Jack. “Aanseinen”: When a player has to play a card of a certain suit, but has none of the sort in his hand, and the current high card of the trick belongs to his partner, the player can play a card that is worth no points (7,8,9) to signal that he wants his partner to come out with this color. This signal means he has either the highest card of the sort, or he can trump the trick.
“Nel-Boer” When someone plays the trump 9, it means he also has the Jack. “Kleintje boer” When someone on the first trick comes out with a non-trump number, he signals he has the trump Jack and wants his partner to come out with a trump to force the other players to give up their high trumps (or to provoke “roem”).
To make the project a little less complex, we chose to ignore the concept of “roem” in the game. This also means the concept of "pit", or winning all tricks in a round, does not apply.