Skat Glossary · Lothar

Game types

Farbspiel (suit game)

A Farbspiel is a suit game: one of the four suits is trump, and its four Jacks lead the trump order regardless of suit. The declarer's own suit choice (Clubs, Spades, Hearts, or Diamonds) sets the base value the round is played over.

A hand anchored by three or four Jacks and a strong side suit, say Diamonds, plays as Farbspiel Diamonds, the highest-value suit choice among the four.

Grand

Grand is the game type where only the four Jacks are trump — no suit is elevated, so every other card keeps its normal rank in its own suit. Grand carries the highest base value of the three game types, which is why a hand strong in Jacks but without one dominant suit often plays better as Grand than as a forced Farbspiel.

Four solid Jacks and scattered high side cards, with no suit long enough to dominate, is the textbook Grand hand.

Null

Null has no trump at all, and the goal reverses: the declarer must lose every single trick. The card order changes too (Sieben, Acht, Neun, Zehn, Bube, Dame, König, Ass), so the Ten drops below the Jack, and each Jack stays in its own suit rather than joining a trump group.

A hand with nothing higher than a Nine or Ten in most suits, and no dangerous combination that could accidentally win a trick, is a safe Null hand.

Ramsch

Ramsch is played when all three players pass in the auction: nobody wanted to declare a game, so instead of voiding the round, Lothar's table plays it out as a three-way scramble. It runs like Grand (only the four Jacks are trump), but there is no declarer: all three players play for themselves, and whoever collects the most Augen loses that total as minus points. Winning every trick (a Durchmarsch) flips the whole round: +120 instead.

Everyone passes at 18; the round is dealt straight into Ramsch, and from here on every player is quietly trying to lose.

Ouvert (open hand)

Ouvert means the declarer's whole hand goes face-up on the table before the first card is even led: every opponent sees exactly what they're playing against. It's the boldest way to declare a Null or a Farbspiel/Grand Hand, and it multiplies the game's value accordingly: nothing to hide means nothing to hedge.

A completely safe Null hand (nothing that could ever be forced to win a trick) is the one that can afford to go Ouvert, since revealing it changes nothing about how it plays.

The auction

Reizen (bidding)

Reizen is the auction that decides who plays alone as declarer. Two players duel at a time: Mittelhand against Vorhand first, then the Dealer against whoever won that first duel, each naming higher and higher numbers along a fixed ladder. Naming a number, bieten or sagen, is a promise: my hand is worth at least this much. That number itself is the Gebot; there is no separate word for the value climbed to versus the value finally played, so "ein hohes Gebot" always means the same thing. Reizen decides only who gets to play, not what they play — that comes after, in the declaration.

Vorhand bids 18, Mittelhand raises to 20, Vorhand passes: Mittelhand's Gebot of 20 wins that duel and moves on to face the Dealer.

Positionen (Vorhand, Mittelhand, Hinterhand)

Skat's traditional table names three seats by their turn order: Vorhand acts first, Mittelhand second, Hinterhand last; the same order both in the auction and, once play starts, in every trick where Vorhand led. Lothar's own interface names the same three turns by what each player does: Geben (giving/dealing), Hören (hearing the first bid), Sagen (saying it). They describe the identical seats from a different angle: Vorhand is whoever currently gives the lead, Hinterhand is whoever currently sits last, and the seat itself rotates with the dealer every round.

Forehand leads the first trick, then Middlehand, then the Dealer: the interface's own words for the same three seats the traditional table calls Vorhand, Mittelhand, and Hinterhand.

Hand

Hand has two senses that share one word. Your hand is simply the ten cards you're dealt and hold; everyone always has one. To play Hand is a specific declaration: the winning bidder leaves the Skat's two cards face-down, untouched, and plays with only the original ten. It's a bet on the hand you were dealt rather than what the Skat might improve, and it raises the game's value in exchange for that risk.

Six or more solid trumps in hand are usually enough to play Hand outright: skipping the Skat entirely and declaring blind.

Drücken (discarding to the Skat)

Drücken (also abdrücken) is what the declarer does after picking up the Skat's two cards: look at all twelve, then discard two back down, face-down, before declaring the game. The two discarded cards still count toward the declarer's Augen at the end — they're never played, but their points are never lost either.

After picking up two low, off-suit cards, the declarer drückt them straight back down unplayed: they weren't going to win anything, but their Augen still bank at the round's end.

Skat (the two cards)

The Skat is the two cards dealt face-down to the table, separate from anyone's hand, at the start of every round. The winning bidder may pick them up (adding them to their hand before discarding two back down) or leave them untouched to play Hand. Either way, the two Skat cards' Augen always count for the declarer at the end — picked up or not.

Two cards, Sieben of Hearts and Acht of Diamonds, sit face-down as the Skat; the declarer picks them up, sees nothing worth keeping, and drückt the same two cards straight back.

Rollen (roles: declarer, defender, ally)

Every round has exactly one declarer, called der Alleinspieler in German: the player who won the auction and plays alone against the other two. The other two are die Gegenspieler, the defenders, working together to stop the declarer. From inside that defending pair, the word for the other one is dein Mitspieler, your ally, never a fixed third role, just whichever of the two Gegenspieler isn't you at the moment.

You win the auction and become the Alleinspieler; the two players across from you are now your Gegenspieler, and from either of their seats, the other one is simply their Mitspieler.

Card play

Trumpf (trump)

Trumpf is whichever cards outrank every other suit for the round: always the four Jacks, plus (in a Farbspiel only) the whole of the declared suit. Trump cards beat any non-trump card regardless of what was led, and within trump the order runs Jacks (Clubs highest, then Spades, Hearts, Diamonds) above the suit's own Ass-Zehn-König-Dame-Neun-Acht-Sieben run. Grand has trump too, just the four Jacks alone, no suit joining them.

In a Diamonds Farbspiel, the weakest trump (the Diamonds Sieben) still beats the strongest non-trump card in the deck, the Clubs Ass.

Bedienen (following suit)

Bedienen is the basic rule of every trick: if you hold a card in the suit that was led, you must play one: you can't hold it back to save it, and you can't play a different suit while you still have the led one. Only once you're completely out of the led suit (and not holding trump, if the round has one you'd rather save) are you free to play whatever you like.

Hearts is led; a player holding three Hearts must bedienen with one of them: playing a Diamond instead isn't legal while a Heart sits in hand.

Stechen (trumping/beating a trick)

Stechen means winning a trick by playing a card that beats what's already down, most often by trumping a suit you're out of, but the word covers any winning play: the highest card of the led suit sticht it too, if no trump appears. Trump always sticht a plain-suit lead, no matter how low the trump or how high the suit card.

Clubs is led, a player has no Clubs left, and plays the Diamonds Bube: even the weakest trump sticht the strongest possible Clubs card.

Schmieren (fattening partner's trick)

Schmieren is the Skat term for adding a high-point card to a trick you aren't winning yourself, but your own side already has: the card doesn't need to win anything, it just hands over its points, which would otherwise go to waste. The name comes from the everyday word schmieren ("to smear/spread", as in buttering bread), figuratively, you spread a little extra onto a trick that's already yours. Everyday copy on this site calls the same move dazulegen; Schmieren is the word Skat rules and experienced players actually use for it.

Your partner leads the unbeatable Clubs Bube; you follow with your Ass of Hearts instead of a low card: it can't help win a trick that's already won, so it schmiert eleven safe Augen onto it instead.

Blank

Blank has two related senses. A card is blank (Ass blank) when it's the only card you hold in that suit, a singleton with nothing to protect it once it's forced out. A suit itself goes blank (blanke Farbe) once you've played or discarded every card in it, leaving you void: you can no longer be forced to follow suit there at all.

Holding only the Herz-Ass and nothing else in Hearts, that Ass sits blank: the very next Hearts lead strips it away with nothing left to hide behind.

Scoring

Augen (card points)

Augen are the point value printed into every card, not a rank you count: 120 in total across the whole deck. Ass is worth 11, Zehn 10, König 4, Dame 3, Bube 2, and the Sieben/Acht/Neun are worth nothing at all. Whoever's side collects more than 60 of those 120 Augen across all ten tricks wins a Farbspiel or Grand round outright. Always counted in the plural, never "ein Auge".

A trick made of the Ass and Zehn of the same suit carries 21 Augen: a fifth of the whole round's total, riding on just two cards.

Spielwert (game value)

Spielwert is the final price the round was played over: the Grundwert (base value) multiplied by however many multiplier steps the hand earned (trump length, Hand, Schneider, Schwarz, Ouvert all add to it). A won round scores exactly this many points; a lost one costs double the same number.

A Clubs Farbspiel's base value of 12, held with three unbroken top trumps (a multiplier of four), plays for a Spielwert of 48 and would cost 96 if it were lost instead.

Grundwert (base value)

Grundwert is the fixed starting number each game type carries before any multiplier is applied: Diamonds 9, Hearts 10, Spades 11, Clubs 12 for a Farbspiel (the trump suit sets it), 24 for Grand, and a separate short ladder for Null depending on whether it's Hand and/or Ouvert. Every multiplier (trump length, Hand, Schneider, Schwarz, Ouvert) multiplies this one number to reach the final Spielwert.

Clubs carries the highest Farbspiel Grundwert of the four suits, 12; the same trump-length multiplier is worth more riding on a Clubs game than on a Diamonds one.

Spitzen (mit/ohne Jacks)

Spitzen counts the unbroken run of top trumps from the Clubs Bube downward, and it sets one of the multiplier steps that scales the Grundwert into the Spielwert. Holding the Clubs Bube counts as mit (with): one, two, three Spitzen for as many Jacks in a row as you hold from the top; missing the Clubs Bube entirely counts the same way as ohne (without). Either way the multiplier grows by one for every unbroken step, mit or ohne.

Holding the Clubs and Spades Bube but not the Hearts one plays mit zwei: two unbroken top trumps, one multiplier step above the base game.

Schneider

Schneider is a scoring threshold, not a separate game type: holding the defending side to 30 Augen or fewer (or, from the declarer's losing side, failing to reach even 31) adds an extra multiplier step on top of the normal win or loss. It's a margin of victory that costs the losing side more, not a different way to play the round.

The declarer's side takes 95 of the 120 Augen, leaving the defenders with only 25, under the 30 line. The round counts Schneider on top of the ordinary win.

Schwarz

Schwarz is Schneider's harder sibling: the losing side takes zero tricks at all, not just few Augen. It stacks another multiplier step on top of Schneider's: a round can be won both Schneider and Schwarz at once, since taking no tricks means holding no Augen either.

The declarer wins all ten tricks; the defenders never got to play a single card that stuck, so the round counts Schwarz, and Schneider along with it, since zero tricks means zero Augen too.