Skat (Play Game Online)

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The Game


Skat is a card game for three players. It is played with a card deck of 32 cards. Once dealing is finished each player ends up with 10 cards each. The rwo remaining cards are stored for later. Your cards are shown face up whilst the cards of the other players are hidden. A Skat game comes in several phases: The first phase is an auction. Here all players bid and the highest player can make the game. How high one can bid depends on the game you plan to play and the amount of Jacks you have. The player who ones the auction can (optionally) open the two extra cards and exchange them against two of his/her cards. This player also announces which game to play (which suite is trump). To compensate for this advantage the two other players play together against this single player.
To make a move in the auction phase, click on the speech dialogs. To open the extra cards click on the lock, to choose a game click on the game window which appears then. To swap extra cards against cards you hold, click on the extra card and then on the card to exchange. In the game you can make a move then by clicking on any of your cards.
The player who is to make an move is indicated by the move icon (a head in the white circle). Players playing together are indicated by two blue figures, whilst a single player has one black figure. The trump suite and game modifiers are shown as icons on the score boards.



Game rules

A good overview over the Skat game can be found on Wikipedia Skat.

  • All four Jacks are counted as trumps and do not belong to their suits.

  • If a color (e.g. heart) is selected as 'trump' all seven hearts as well as all four Jacks count as trumps, making 11 trump cards.

  • Jacks beat each other in order (greatest to least): Club->Spade->Heart->Diamond.

  • The sequence of cards for a trump color: Jack of clubs, Jack of spades, Jack of hearts, Jack of diamonds, Ace, Ten, King, Queen, Nine, Eight, Seven.

  • The sequence of cards for a non-trump color: Ace, Ten, King, Queen, Nine, Eight, Seven.

  • The values of the cards (highest to lowest):

Card Value Card Value
Ace 11 Jack 2
Ten 10 Nine 0
King 4 Eight 0
Queen 3 Seven 0

  • A special 'trump' game is called the Grand. In this game no suit is trump and only the four Jacks count as trump. This game type is indicated by the symbol of a Jack's head on the score board.

  • Another special game is called the Null. In this game no suit is trump but the player has to avoid getting any trick. As soon as he gets any trick he lost the game. The sequence of cards does change in this game to: Ace, King, Queen, Jack, Ten, Nine, Eight, Seven. This game type is indicated by the symbol of a Zero on the score board.

  • The player who start a round can choose any card to play.

  • The second and third players have to play the same suite as the first player played (keep in mind that the jacks count to the trump suite!). Only if a player does not have the first players's suite he/she can play any card.

  • The player who wins the round starts the next one.

  • The player who wins the round adds the values of the cards played in that round to his/her score.

  • The single player wins the game with more then 60 points. If he wins with more than 90 or with 120 points an extra score is awarded (Schneider, Schwarz).

  • For each game a certain amount of victory points is awarded and added to the overall score.

This game currently uses the AI engine of the Open Source Game XSkat 4.0. Many thanks to Gunter Gerhardt for his effort. See also the XSkat license.
Last update: May 2008 by java@heni-online.de