Skat (SHKAHT)

Skat (pronounced SHKAHT) is a German card game. At this moment, Seth, Andrea, Audrey, and I are playing the game. It took us about an hour and a half to get to the point where we could start (reading over the rules and such – this is MY first time playing, though my siblings have poured over the rules before).

My guess is that if biology, chemistry, or physics were card games, they would be called skat. Why? Because it’s so incredibly complex!!! However, as we play, I am finding that it is also quite fun. The nuances of play and scoring and strategy are quite intriguing. I don’t know if I can explain it, but to give you a taste of the game I’ll use a tennis analogy.

In tennis, you have three “layers”: the game, the set, and the match. You win a certain number of games to win a set. You win a certain number of sets to win a match. That’s pretty simple.

In Skat (and I’ll make up my own terminology here because it wasn’t clear from the instructions), you win a bid to play a hand and so win the game; you win a game to get points (which you need to win the whole kit and kaboodle 🙂 ). Now it gets complicated because there are many different types of games (following slightly different rules) that are each worth different amounts of points which can be multiplied by various elements in the game (that change with each game)…like I said, skat is like physics or biology or chemistry turned into a card game.

Anyway, here’s a picture of us playing the game 😀