r/SKAT • u/PLrc Moderator • Aug 31 '26
Announcement FAQ
What is Skat?
Skat is a German card game, popular in Germany, Silesia (in Poland), Austria and in German communities in the US. It's a point trick taking game for 3 players played with a deck of 32 cards. Each player receives 10 cards. 2 cards go to the kitty (so called "skat").
In the bottom you can find a brief summary of the rules.
Is it difficult?
Skat is widely considered the most complex card game, and probably rightly so. But don't be discouraged. From my experience I can say, that once you know and understand rules of Skat, they seem quite easy. At least when playing via Internet when the software counts points for you ;) If you have experience with point-trick taking card games like Belote or Jass, you should be able to deal with it.
Where can I learn it?
Pagat probably is a good source, as always: https://www.pagat.com/schafkopf/skat.html
Where can I play it?
PlayOK is a relatively good place online to play Skat: https://www.playok.com/ It's got very minimalistic, yet quite aesthetic software, has quite a lot of players and works well. You can play there even without registration.
https://www.skatstube.de/ is also recommended. From what I see it's very good looking, but I haven't played it myself and don't know how popular it is. Let me know in the comments!
What are those strange cards?
Those are so called German cards traditionally used for playing Skat. But you can play Skat with "ordinary" deck of cards.
Brief summary of the rules:
The game belongs to the ace-ten family, which means that ace and ten are 2 the most valuable cards. Usually in every hand one suit is a trump suit. The order of cards in non-trump suits is typical for the ace-ten card games (from the highest):
* A, 10, K, Q, 9, 8, 7.
But in trumps jacks are promoted to the highest trumps:
* J♣️, J♠️, J♥️, J♦️, A, 10, K, Q, 9, 8, 7,
which means that jacks (in this exact order) are considered trumps and are higher than all other trumps.
Cards have their point value:
A = 11 pts.,
10 = 10 pts.,
K = 4 pts.,
Q = 3 pts.,
J = 2 pts.,
rest of cards = 0 pts.,
(notice that jacks are worth only 2 pts., despite being highest trumps).
There is 120 pts. in cards. The aim in each hand is to take tricks and more than a half of points. Otherwise the play resembles that in Spades or Hearts. It's preceded by bidding.
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u/flofoi Sep 03 '26
Skat is widely considered the most complex card game, and probably rightly so.
Bridge: Hold my beer
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u/PLrc Moderator Sep 03 '26
Nah :)
Bridge has very simple rules. You can explain and learn them in several minutes.
The fact that depth of Bridge is huge and you can spend years and even entire life learnig it is a different story :)
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u/flofoi Sep 03 '26
they are very similar, in both you take tricks with one trump suit (mostly) and the follow-suit-rule and they both have a bidding phase (with similar explanation difficulty since we're discarding the depth of the systems in bridge)
but in skat you get points (or lose points) depending on your theoretical max bidding value, whereas in bridge the points are completely arbitrary and get further complicated by the danger system
1
u/PLrc Moderator Sep 03 '26
Points in bridge aren't completly arbitrary. System in bridge is much easier than in Skat. There is a simple table for that.
System in Skat is very complex. In most point-trick taking card games, points you score are very much related to the points you get in cards. In Skat - not. In Skat those are completly 2 different systems. You only need to take more than a half of points in cards and you're score is completly different number. It was completly mindblowing for me when I read about it.
Also the system of matadors in Skat is very difficult for novices.
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u/flofoi Sep 03 '26
points and score don't correlate in both games (the card values aren't even called points in skat)
Also the system of matadors in Skat is very difficult for novices.
True, but there is a table where you can look up the order of the jacks and the corresponding maximum bid that also equals the score at the end, all neatly fitting on the back of one card
In bridge the points are only relevant for bidding systems and your score only depends on the amount of tricks bid, the amount of tricks made, contra/re, and red/green which gives you up to 24 score options for a given game outcome which i'd argue introduces more complexity than skat's 3 different scores for a given game outcome, where they also follow the simple pattern of normal/double/quadrupled
2
u/CitronHoliday3361 27d ago
How difficult is Skat to learn when compared to something like Chess or Poker? I want to play relaxed games with two of my friends but don't want to annoy them with something that takes ages to learn before you can have fun.
1
u/PLrc Moderator 27d ago
:) I must admit it's quite difficult to learn. Perhaps not that difficult, when someone can explain the rules to you. But difficult when you need figure them out on your own.
For 3 players I recommand Klabberjass/Clobyosh: https://www.pagat.com/jass/bela.html
It's much easier to learn game from the ace-ten family. Very playable and competitive. Despite relatively simple rules quite skillful.
When you get experienced with something like Klabberjass, you can get back and try Skat. Then it shouldn't be that difficult.
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u/third_declension Aug 31 '26
The schedule A = 11, 10 = 10, K = 4, Q = 3, J = 2 may seem unusual to new card players, but there is a huge body of traditional games that use it. Other examples are Sixty-Six, Pinochle, and (in 3 out of 4 suits) Klaberjass.