There is a longer version of this report covering other versions of Skat.

This page presents a table of bidding values for the most widely-recognized version of the card game Skat. It is not intended to be a comprehensive guide to Skat rules which, like its strategy, are complicated.

The only legal bids are the values that can be obtained exactly from play. They are listed in table C, and are indeed the whole point of this report. For instance, a bid of 18, 20, or 22 would be welcome, but a bid of 19 or 21 would be rejected.

The table relies on the rules formed by agreement (1998) between the Deutsche Skatverband (DSkV) and the International Skat Players Association (ISPA). The information presented on this page is consistent with a table presented on Wikipedia, but is here arranged in what some players may find a more convenient format.

Helpful terms.

This page is written in very simple HTML for the convenience of players who want to adapt the tables for their preferred custom rules. The present author prepared it using an ordinary text editor; the format needs to be plain text.

Playing cards intended for Skat often employ the traditional German suits of acorns, leaves, hearts, and bells. However, Skat can be, and often is, played with cards bearing the well-known French suits of (respectively) clubs, spades, hearts, and diamonds. Although French pips are usually printed in only red and black, special packs with different colors for the four suits are manufactured to help prevent mistakes in play. Appearing in the tables below is the four-color scheme preferred for Skat.

Beyond that, German cards characteristically bear the ranks (high to low) of Ace (also called Daus), König, Ober, Unter, Ten, Nine, Eight, and Seven. These correspond to the French ranks of Ace, King, Queen, Jack, Ten, Nine, Eight, and Seven. Note that Skat, in most of its game choices, promotes the Jacks to the highest rank, and the Tens to a position between the Kings and Aces.

This report employs French suits and ranks, rather than German.

If nobody bids, a game of Ramsch is often unofficially played. Players play tricks aiming to take as few card points as possible. Most versions of Ramsch do not entail base values, multipliers, or bidding, so they are not covered here.

The various games are:

The multipliers that might be used are:

There are 82 possible bids, but sometimes there are 2 or 3 of them are at the same point value. As a result, there are only 63 bidding levels: