ORIGINATING in the south of what is now East Germany in the early part of the 19th century, Skat has become a popular pub game over most of German-speaking central Europe.

Played at the highest level Skat is one of the most skilful of all card games, and it is particularly recommended for people who play Hearts (Black Maria, chase the Lady, etc.) but find that game too straightforward.

NUMBER OF PLAYERS

Skat is a game for three players.

CARDS

The pack is of 32 cards (as used for Piquet, Euchre, etc.), and consists of four suits: clubs, spades, hearts and diamond, each suit containing Ace, King, Queen, Jack, 10,9,8,7.

The four Jacks are always part of the trump suit in Skat, and they always rank in the order: clubs, spades, hearts, diamonds (clubs are high). The 10 ranks between Ace and King.

The order of the trump suit is:
♣ J; ♠ J; ♥ J; ♦ J, a, 10, K, Q, 9, 8 , 7 (11 cards).

And the order of the other three suits is:
Ace, 10, King, Queen , 9 , 8,7 (Seven cards)

There is also a contract, called ‘Grand’, in which there are, effectively, five suits: the four Jacks, which are trumps, form a small suit by themselves, and the other four suits have seven cards each.
(Note that in all contracts the Jacks are treated exactly as ordinary members of the trump suit for the purposes of play, so that, for example, if hearts are trumps and the ♦ J is led, the other players are forced to follow with hearts [or Jacks] if they any.)

The cards have widely differing values s follows:

This makes a total of 120 points in the pack. The object of the game is to capture half these ‘card points’ in tricks (Declarer need 61 points to win, the defenders need 60 to beat him).
The skat counts as part of the declarer’s tricks, so that if he discards two 10s for example, he already has 20 points almost a third of his target.

Note that the Jacks, which are the most powerful cards for poker winning tricks, are not in themselves worth many points this special feature of Skat is responsible for much of the strategic richness of the game.

To determine the dealer for the first hand, cards are dealt out one at a time by whoever happens to hold them, face up, one to each player. The first person to get a Jack is dealer.

The dealer shuffles, then someone else cuts, then the dealer deals, clockwise starting with the player on his left, three cards to each player, then two to the skat, then four cards each, then another three each (the peculiar English habit of dealing cards one at a time is rare in central Europe).

The deal moves round to the left on subsequent hand. The player on Dealer’s left is called ‘Forehand’, the other player is called ‘Middlehand’.

BIDDING

The bidding consists of an auction between the three players. The bids are numbers, and represent the number of points the player contracts to score if he becomes the declarer. If someone else eventually becomes the declarer then there is no obligation on the bidder.

If the declarer makes a higher score than he bid then that is fine – he scores the higher number. Note that these bids are scores, not numbers of card points – the contract is always to make 61 card points (unless Schneider is announced).

The process of bidding is for one player to call numbers in ascending order while a second player says ‘Yes’ after each bid poker. Eventually one of them drops out of the auction by saying ‘Pass’.

The auction begins with Middlehand bidding and Forehand saying ‘Yes’ (or ‘Pass’), then when one of these two has passed, the dealer starts bidding and the other says ‘Yes’ (or passes).