How to Score Klaverjassen: The Boompje Explained
Klaverjassen is the Dutch national card game, and its score sheet is one of the few in the world with its own name. The boompje, the little tree, is a four block grid with checkpoints at 648, 1296, 1944 and 2592, and generations of players have filled it in by hand at kitchen tables across the Netherlands, Belgium and Suriname.
This is how the scoring works, and what a digital boompje gets right that a paper one does not.
The basics
Four players, fixed partnerships. You and your partner are Wij, the opponents are Zij, and the seats do not change. The deck is 32 cards, sevens up to aces.
Every hand distributes exactly 162 card points, plus any roem. That fixed total is the whole foundation of Klaverjassen scoring: if the two team scores do not add to 162 plus roem, something is wrong and the sheet should say so.
Card values
Trump and non trump rank differently, and this is the single thing new players get wrong most often.
| Card | Trump | Non trump |
|---|---|---|
| Jack | 20 | 2 |
| Nine | 14 | 0 |
| Ace | 11 | 11 |
| Ten | 10 | 10 |
| King | 4 | 4 |
| Queen | 3 | 3 |
| Eight | 0 | 0 |
| Seven | 0 | 0 |
The jack and nine of trumps, the nel and the jas, are worth 34 points between them and rank above the ace. Add the ten points for winning the last trick and the deck totals 162.
Roem
Roem is a bonus for card combinations inside a trick, declared as the trick is taken:
- Three cards in sequence in one suit: 20
- Four cards in sequence in one suit: 50
- King and queen of trumps together, the stuk: 20
- Four of a kind at the top of trumps: 100
Roem lands with whoever wins the trick, not whoever held the cards, which is why it can swing a hand that looked settled.
Pit and nat
Two outcomes short circuit the whole count.
Pit is taking every trick. The playing team gets all 162 plus all roem, and the defenders get nothing.
Nat is the opposite: the team that chose trump failed to take more than half. They score zero, and every point plus every roem goes to the other side.
In Braggster's round sheet, both are single buttons under the Wij and Zij door selector. PIT fills 162, NAT fills 0. You do not add anything up, and you cannot key in a total that could not have happened.
The boompje
The traditional block runs sixteen rounds in four blocks of four, with a tel checkpoint at the bottom of each block:
| Block | Running total checkpoint |
|---|---|
| After 4 rounds | 648 |
| After 8 rounds | 1296 |
| After 12 rounds | 1944 |
| After 16 rounds | 2592 |
Those numbers are not arbitrary. Four rounds at 162 points a round is 648, and the checkpoints exist so a mistake is caught within four hands instead of at the end of the evening.
Each team's block carries three columns, Punten, Roem and Mars, plus Roem, Mars and Totaal summary rows. The match completes at the sixteenth round.
Braggster reproduces this layout rather than replacing it with a generic table, because the boompje is what Klaverjassen players already know how to read. What changes is that the arithmetic and the checkpoints are computed instead of trusted.
Variants
Braggster ships the two standard Dutch variants relative to the base game:
- Amsterdams: the trump chooser must beat the opponents or go nat, with the usual obligations to
play trump and to overtrump.
- Rotterdams: the stricter obligation set, where you must always trump and always overtrump when
you can.
Your family's house rules probably match one of the two. Pick it at match setup and the sheet follows.
Frequently asked questions
How many points is a full Klaverjassen game? 2592 over sixteen rounds, which is 162 times sixteen. Roem is added on top of that, so real totals run higher.
What happens if a team goes nat? The trump choosing team scores zero and the defenders take all 162 card points plus all roem from the hand.
Is roem included in the 162? No. The 162 is card points only. Roem is added separately, and it is tracked in its own column on the boompje.
Does the app handle Amsterdams and Rotterdams differently? The obligations differ in play, not in arithmetic, so you pick the variant at setup and it is recorded with the match. The scoring path is the same.
Can I see the card values while playing? Yes. The rules screen carries a visual card rank and points chart with separate trump and off suit rows, alongside the roem explanation.
More: browse every card game at braggster.com/games, or read the overview of card game scoring.