Everything You Need To Know About The Baloot Championship In Saudi Arabia

From ancient and unique coffee and tea drinking rituals to amazing food recipes and Oriental rug hand-weaving techniques, the Arab culture has many amazing traditions passed down from generation to generation. Another interesting and at the same time rather intriguing ancient tradition is the game of Baloot, an old game of cards that resembles the game of poker players all around the world are familiar with. What makes this game even more unique and captivating is the fact that the Arab people have been embracing it for centuries, in spite of the highly restrictive gambling rules in the Arab world.

Even more, in an attempt to further expand the culture of this game in the Arab world, as well as encourage friendliness and bring Arab states together, Saudi Arabia has started hosting a Baloot Championship in its capital-city Riyadh. The championship doesn't get many headlines outside of the Arab world but the latest event sparked some controversy online. In this article, we dig deeper into the Baloot Championship and the controversy that sparked a heated debate on Social Media. 

The Baloot Championship

The game of Baloot is an amazingly dynamic and challenging card game that requires players to use their best skills and make full use of their brains and strategic thinking. The rules highly resemble the French game of Belote, a highly entertaining and fun game to play. Team members are supposed to show great proof of cohesion and continue to grow throughout the tournament to get one step closer to becoming the big winners.

The Saudis, in particular, enjoy playing Baloot and a simple look at the high attendance in terms of young adults during the championship comes to show prove just that. Saudi Arabia has hosted several Baloot tournaments in Riyadh over the past few years.

The last championship was held between the 13^th and the 20^th of February and it was hosted by the Riyadh Front shopping mall, according to information from the General Entertainment Authority of Saudi Arabia. The tourney had some appealing rewards totaling 2 million Saudi Arabian Riyal: four individual prizes of $270,000 for the top four players and a whopping SR 500,000 for the indisputable winner of the tournament.

The Controversy That Sparked Debate On Social Media

As expected, the tournament attendance was massive, with more than 12,000 people eager to register and participate in the Baloot championship. It wasn't just the extremely attractive financial rewards that contributed to this massive number of participants, as with most poker tournaments around the world, both online and offline. The uniqueness of the event itself, in the peculiar, limited and highly-restrictive gambling context in the Arab world where gambling is prohibited turned even more heads and sparked even more interest than the promise of the rewards. 

While the tournament participants knew exactly why they were there, some people saw a rather controversial video online showing people engaged in a game of cards. The video appeared to be depicting a casino, or a potential gambling arena, in Saudi Arabia. While Baloot is considered a respectable card game, poker and other games involving money continue to be prohibited in Saudi Arabia. There are today several modern online gambling platforms like CasinoelArab open to Arabic speakers living abroad but a gaming event for money in Saudi Arabia would have been a direct violation of the countries strict prohibition against gambling. Gambling is forbidden by the Koran as the Saudi Arabia constitution is entirely based on this book. With this in mind, it's easy to understand why the video quickly recorded thousands of views on Twitter and Facebook. However, the context in which the video had been distributed, was a misleading one. The video actually displayed the previously mentioned Baloot championship in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. 

Baloot - Also for Women

Another particularity of the latest Baloot championship was the fact that, for the first time ever in history, it allowed women to participate. This was the first recorded female presence in a card game tournament in the Gulf region. The same video that was leaked over the internet introduced viewers to a brief interview with a female tournament participant that claimed her husband was the one who taught her how to play this antique game. Once again, this comes to prove just how deeply-rooted this game truly is in the Arab culture. 

The game of Baloot may be of ancient origin but the game is very popular among Arabian Gulf youngsters. Women facing off men for the first time during this championship was described by the media as an event filled with passion.