Skat (card game)
three-player card game
Skat (German pronunciation: [ˈskaːt]), historically Scat, is a three-player trick-taking card game of the ace–ten family, devised around 1810 in Altenburg in the Duchy of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg. It is the national game of Germany and, along with Doppelkopf, it is the most popular card game in Germany and Silesia and one of the most popular in the rest of Poland. A variant of 19th-century Skat was once popular in the US. John McLeod considers it one of the best and most interesting card games for three players, and Kelbet described it as "the king of German card games." The German Skat Association assesses that it is played by around 25 million Germans – more than play football.
History
Skat was developed by the members of a local Tarock club, the Brommesche Tarok-Gesellschaft around 1810–1813 in Altenburg, in what is now the State of Thuringia, Germany.
Skat is based on the three-player Tarot game of Grosstarock and the four-player game of Schafkopf (forerunner of American Sheepshead). It has become the most loved and widely played German card game, especially in German-speaking regions. In the earliest known form of the game, the player in the first seat was dealt twelve cards and the other two players ten each. He then made two discards, constituting the Skat, and announced a contract. But the main innovation of this new game was that of the bidding process.
The earliest recorded rules for "Scat" date to 1835, by when it was already popular in the Kingdom of Saxony, especially in the Duchy of Altenburg and the surrounding area.
The public source identifies “Skat (card game)” as three-player card game. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Skat, card and game.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q504577. The Library of Congress control number is sh85123096. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1810, 1813 and 1835.
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This entry incorporates text from “Skat (card game)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.