About Us

Hi, I'm Daniel.

I grew up in Germany playing Skat with my grandpa and my brother, and kept playing constantly through high school — pulling out a deck with friends between almost every class. After moving to the US, I tried teaching it to a group of fellow Googlers who were serious board-game people. It did not go smoothly. These are engineers with math and CS backgrounds — exactly the kind of people who usually pick up a new game fast — and they still got stuck on things like the 10 outranking the King and Queen. Lots of confused “wait, why?” moments.

That reaction is what stuck with me: if a rule trips up people that sharp, the problem isn’t them — it’s how the cards are designed. My day job is software engineering, but for about three years on the side, I worked on fixing that: designing new cards, making the explainer videos, testing prototypes with friends and coworkers, tracking down manufacturers, and figuring out fulfillment — all so more people could learn Skat without fighting the deck itself.

The Blue Rings deck launched on Kickstarter in October 2020, funded in about 7 hours, and closed at 558% of its goal with 122 backers. It's sold in small numbers ever since, packaged and shipped by hand.

I'm fully committed to this project and still genuinely excited every time someone tells me it helped them finally learn Skat, or convinced a skeptical group of German-suited-deck purists to give it a try.

The deck is sold through Blue Rings LLC. If you have questions, feedback, or just want to talk about Skat, email me directly — blueringsllc@gmail.com.