Skat Scoresheet

Scoresheet for the card game Skat. Either three or four players are supported.

The initial version is text-based and is run from the command line.

A web-based version with similar functionality is in progress.

House Rules

The following house rules are not configurable

• Player #1 is the first dealer
• In four player games, the dealer sits out play for that hand
• Declaring
  • Must play Hand in order to announce Schneider or Schwarz
  • Suit Open or Grand Open bid only allowed with Hand bid and implies that Schneider and Schwarz are announced
• Scoring
  • Losses count double for non-Ramsch contracts
  • Grand base value is 24
  • Opponents must take 31 to avoid Schneider
  • Declarer must collect at least 31 points to avoid Schneider
  • Null scoring:
    • Standard bid: 23
    • Hand not Open: 35
    • Open not Hand: 46
    • Hand and Open: 59
• Ramsch
  • There is no Bock during a Ramsch round
    • A "nobody bids 18" Ramsch hand has Bock scoring during Bock round
    • If Grand Hand is allowed during a Ramsch round, then:
      • No Bock can be created, regardless of other settings
      • Kontra/Rekontra is not allowed, regardless of other settings
  • A player taking all tricks (Durchmarsch) scores +120 points
  • If no single player takes all tricks, then the player who collects the most card points has those card points deducted
    • More than one player can lose points in the case of a tie
    • If a player takes zero tricks, the losing hand(s) score(s) double
• Bock round
  • Scores double during a Bock round

The following house rules are configurable at the start of the game

• Kontra and Rekontra allowed
• Ramsch
  • Play a Ramsch round (3 or 4 hands, depending on number of players) after playing a Bock round
  • During a Ramsch round, each player has a chance to bid a Grand Hand, in which case the declarer leads and the hand is scored as if it were a regular Grand Hand contract (with Bock and Kontra exceptions noted above)
  • Entire game can be played as Ramsch rounds
• Bock round
  • A new Bock round (3 or 4 hands, depending on number of players) is created in the following cases:
    • For suit and Grand contracts:
      • Declarer and opponents each take 60 points
      • Raw hand score >= 120 (before Bock/Lose/Kontra/Re doubling)
    • Successful Kontra (declarer loses)
    • Any Rekontra (i.e. declarer says Re to opponent's Kontra)
    • The contract results in a Schneider
      • Only if current hand is not a Bock hand
    • Two full non-Ramsch rounds of hands (starting with Player 1) without creating a Bock round
  • A maximum of one Bock round can be created per hand
    • For example, a 120 raw hand score with a Schneider only creates 1 Bock round
  • Ramsch hand is played if nobody bids 18

Player-enforced rules

These rules are enforced by the players, not the scoresheet, so there is no code or configuration associated with them:

• An opponent must not have passed on an 18 bid in order to say Kontra

To-Do

Create a GUI version.

Future Features

Features that may be added in a future release:

• Saving the game to a file
• Configuration file with setup parameters (# of players, player names)
  • Default name; if it exists, use it. Add default name to .gitignore

Building

The code is fully text-based and should work on any modern Unix/Linux-based system. I have compiled and tested it on MacOS (clang versions 15.0.0 and 17.0.0) and Ubuntu 24 (GNU version 13.3.0).

To build:

cd src
make

The executable is named skat-scoresheet and takes no arguments.

Testing

The code is tested with the GitHub action workflow Test.yml.

This workflow builds the code and then runs several test input files (test-*-input.txt) through the program and compares the output to files containing the expected output (test-*-output.txt).

Web-based Version

A web-based version is in progress (see docs/index.html). This is a manual port of the C++ code over to JavaScript and uses HTML to provide a GUI. It is entirely run in the browser; there is no back-end processing involved.

The web page is published using GitHub Pages and can be accessed on github.io.

References

• Skat Wikipedia
• Various rules and history references:
  • Pagat
  • Skatinsel
  • Reference Card
  • Foster's Skat Manual, (c) 1922
  • Ramsch

License

The software and other files in this repository are released under what is commonly called the MIT License. See the file LICENSE.txt in this repository.