Skat – Play Online for Free

Skat is a card game for three in which one player takes on the other two in every deal, and the bidding decides who that lone player is. It grew up in the 1810s in Altenburg, Thuringia, where a circle of townsmen combined Schafkopf with the two-card discard of Tarock and with bidding borrowed, by way of the German game Solo, from Ombre, the Spanish game Belinda plays in Alexander Pope's "The Rape of the Lock". The name comes from the Italian scarto, a discard, and refers to the two cards laid aside. Since 2016 Skat has been on Germany's national inventory of intangible cultural heritage. German immigrants brought it to America in the 19th century, a North American Skat League held its first congress in St. Louis in 1898, and the game is still played in Wisconsin and Texas. Here you can play Skat online for free, with no download and no sign-up, while the computer takes the other two seats.

Eighteen, twenty, pass: Skat rules, bids and tricks of the trade

The deck has 32 cards: clubs, spades, hearts and diamonds, each holding the eight ranks from seven to ace. Every player gets ten, and two lie face down in the middle; those two are the skat. At the end, the card points in your tricks decide: an ace scores 11, a ten 10, a king 4, a queen 3 and a jack 2, while nines, eights and sevens count for nothing, 120 in all. The deal moves on every round, so everyone takes a turn as forehand, middlehand and rearhand, and the letters F, M and R beside the names show who sits where.

• Bidding: Middlehand offers forehand numbers, starting at 18, then 20, 22, 23, 24, 27, 30 and so on. Forehand holds with "Yes" or drops out with "Pass". The survivor of that duel then faces bids from rearhand, and the last one still in the auction takes on the other two single-handed. When it is your turn to bid, your button always shows the next value.
• Picking up the skat or playing hand: The declarer may take the two cards from the middle and then lay away any two cards. That is the discard, and its card points belong to the declarer. Playing hand leaves the skat untouched and raises the game value by one level, and its card points are still added to the declarer's tricks at the end.
• Announcing the game: You choose between four suit games with base values of diamonds 9, hearts 10, spades 11 and clubs 12, the Grand at 24, in which only the four jacks are trumps, and Null. Each button shows what that game is worth with your cards, and a game that would fall short of your bid is marked separately.
• Trumps and following suit: The jacks are the highest trumps, ranked clubs, spades, hearts, diamonds from the top. In a suit game they are followed by the ace, ten, king, queen, nine, eight and seven of the trump suit, and a jack never belongs to the suit printed on it. Forehand leads to the first trick. If you can follow suit, you must: a suit is answered with the same suit and a trump with a trump. Only when you cannot are you free to throw off a card or to trump.
• What a game is worth: base value times multiplier. The multiplier counts the matadors, the unbroken run of trumps from the jack of clubs down that you hold ("with") or lack ("without"), plus one for the game and one each for hand, Schneider and Schwarz. The two cards of the skat count toward the matadors as well.
• Winning: The declarer needs 61 card points. If the defenders take no more than 30, they are Schneider, and without a single trick they are Schwarz. Both work the other way around too and then increase the loss. If the game value at the end is below the bid, the declarer has overbid and loses, even with 61 card points.
• Null: There are no trumps and the ranking changes: below the ace come the king, queen and jack, and only then the ten, ahead of the three low cards. The declarer must not take a single trick. Null scores 23 and Null Hand 35, and the declarer's first trick loses the game and ends it on the spot.
• Ramsch: If neither middlehand nor rearhand bids, forehand may still play for 18. If forehand declines as well, the deal turns into a Ramsch: everyone plays alone, only the jacks are trumps, and whoever collects the most card points has them deducted. The skat goes to the winner of the last trick. If one player takes no trick at all, a Jungfrau, the loser's penalty doubles, and a player who wins all ten tricks scores 120 points for this Durchmarsch.

A won game credits the declarer with its value, a lost one costs twice as much, and the defenders score nothing in that deal. Scoring follows this simple list, without the extra points that clubs and tournaments add. After twelve deals the highest total wins. Null Ouvert, announcing Schneider or Schwarz in advance, and Kontra and Re are not part of this version. On Easy the computer opponents play many cards carelessly and never risk a hand game; on Hard they calculate every card exactly.

A few tricks that will win you more games:

• Count first, then bid: Before your first bid, count your matadors and work out what your best game is worth. Holding the jacks of clubs and spades but not the jack of hearts, a clubs game is "with two, game three", so three times 12 makes 36. What matters is the order, not the number of jacks: the jacks of clubs and hearts without the jack of spades are still "with one".
• Careful when bidding "without": Anyone who bids on missing matadors is hoping that the jack of clubs is not in the skat. If it turns up there, "without two" suddenly becomes "with one", and the game is worth less than you counted on.
• Pull trumps first: As declarer, strip the defenders of their trumps early, ideally with your high jacks. After that nobody can trump your aces and tens.
• Discard wisely: Whatever you put in the skat is yours for certain. A ten without its ace is safe there, whereas in play the ace would catch it easily. Getting rid of a short suit altogether also pays off, because afterward you can trump it.
• Load your partner's tricks: When a trick is sure to go to your fellow defender, throw in an ace or a ten. Skat players call this schmieren, and it brings you faster to the 60 card points that are enough for the defense to win.
• Null only with low cards: The seven, eight and nine of a suit are a treasure in a Null game, while a lone ace without small cards to back it almost always costs a trick.
• Unload in a Ramsch: Throw aces and tens into other players' tricks early whenever you cannot follow suit, and stay away from the last trick, because it carries the card points of the skat along with it.

Different tables, same passion: five card games for fans of trumps and tricks

Still in the mood for cards after twelve deals? These related games are waiting, also against the computer:

• Hearts: A trick-taking game without trumps in which, unlike a declarer at Skat, you want to take as little as possible. Every heart in your tricks costs a point, while the queen of spades alone costs thirteen. If you enjoy playing Null, you will feel at home here in no time.
• Spades: Here too you bid before play, though not game values but the number of tricks you and your partner across the table expect to take. Spades outrank every other suit as trumps.
• Mau-Mau: The deck is the same as here, 32 cards from the seven up. Instead of taking tricks, the race is to run out of cards before anyone else, and sevens, eights and jacks have special powers.
• Durak: A trump game from Russia with 36 cards. The card at the foot of the stock decides trumps, and the last player left with cards becomes the durak, the fool.
• Scopa: As in Skat, what counts at the end of a deal is what you have captured. The Italian classic awards points for the most cards, the most diamonds, the seven of diamonds and the best primiera, and you play it as a team against two computer opponents.