1930 · (Public Domain)
From The Complete Book of Indoor Games by Peter Arnold:
Klabberjass is probably best known in America than in England, because under the names of Clabber,Clobber, Clubby, Klab and Klob, it occurs in Damon Runyon's amusing stories,and in 1937 a variation of the game, jo-jotte was publicized by Ely Culbertson. Despite the simularity of names it is not idenical with the Hungarian game of kalabrias, which is a game for three or four players. There may have been a common ancestor, or possibly the game was taken to the New World by Central European immigrants and there bowdlerized version of kalabrias. (Exeter Books, 1984)
Klabberjass is played in the North American and Great Britain with the 32 card deck. (6s, 5s,4s,3s, and 2s removed from the standard 52 card deck.) The trump suit enjoys the strange ranking of the Jass genre: J 9 A 10 K Q 8 7. Non trump suit rank A 10 K Q J 9 8 7 as in the Skat-Pinochle family. Six cards are dealt to each player and a card is turned up. Non-dealer then begins a bidding round to first to accept the turn-up as trump. Or pass. If both pass on the turn-up card a second round is held. Here the non-dealer may take the bid by naming one of the other three suits or pass, dealer than may take the bid by naming the suit of throw in the hand. (Some allow for a bid of "Schmeiss" which means to the bidder will take the hand with the turn-up or the hand can be thrown in at the non-bidders discretion)
After bidding, the dealer deals three more cards to the hand. Then sequences are scored. For this purpose the cards revert back to their numeral rank. A sequence of three scores 20 and a sequence of 4 or more scores 50. tiebreakers are decided by rank. As I will describe later, it may make sense not to score in this round and you are not obligated to do so.
Non-dealer leads to first trick. A player must follow suit. If he cannot he must trump if able. If trump is lead he must play a higher trump if able. If he holds the King and Queen of trump he may announce "Bella" on play of the second card and score 50 points. Once again he may choose not to score for this.
After the cards are played, both score for the following cards won:
