Skat bidding
Skat Bidding, Explained
Bidding is the part of Skat most explanations gesture at and move past. Here's the whole mechanism — who bids to whom, why the numbers are the numbers they are, and what to actually bid with a given hand.
What bidding actually decides
Every hand, one player becomes the declarer: they play alone, against the other two working together. Bidding is how the table decides who. Whoever wins the bidding wins the right to declare — but winning it is also a promise: your finished game has to be worth at least the number you won the bidding at, or you lose automatically, and it counts double against you. So a bid isn't an opening offer you can walk back — it's a floor you're committing to clear.
Bidding order
Three seats, named by position relative to the dealer: Forehand (left of the dealer), Middlehand (left of Forehand), and Rearhand(the dealer). Bidding always runs in the same two stages:
- Middlehand bids to Forehand. Middlehand names a number (or passes); Forehand either holds (agrees to that number) or passes. They go back and forth, Middlehand raising each time, until one of them passes.
- The survivor is bid to by Rearhand. Whoever didn't pass now faces the dealer the same way — Rearhand has to overbid the number that just survived to get in, then the two of them go back and forth the same way.
- Whoever passes last loses the exchange they're in. The last person left who hasn't passed becomes the declarer, at the last number they agreed to (not necessarily the highest number ever spoken — the number both sides in the final exchange actually held to).
In practice, most hands don't escalate far — bidding customarily climbs one step of the ladder below at a time, and a lot of hands end at 18–24 with one early pass.
Why base value × multiplier isn't arbitrary
Every game value is Base Value × Level: a fixed number per suit (Diamonds 9, Hearts 10, Spades 11, Clubs 12, Grand 24) multiplied by a level your hand determines mechanically — not chosen, calculated. Two hands both playing Clubs don't get to bid the same amount just because they both like Clubs; the level comes from how many of the top trump you hold (or are missing) in an unbroken run, plus fixed additions for how you choose to play it (Hand, Schneider, Schwarz, and their announcements — see the cheat sheet for the full table). That's also why the bid ladder below has gaps: 25, 26, 31, 41, 43, 52 and plenty of other numbers never appear on it, because no base-value-times-level combination lands on them. The ladder isn't every number — it's every number a hand can actually be worth.
Matadors, with worked examples
"Matadors" is the name for that unbroken-run count. In a suit game, trump isn't just the four Jacks — the chosen suit's own cards continue the same sequence right behind them, in their usual rank order, for 11 trump cards total:
J♣ > J♠ > J♥ > J♦ > A > 10 > K > Q > 9 > 8 > 7 (of the trump suit)
Starting from the top (J♣) and working down, count how many you have in an unbroken run before the first one you don't — that's "with N." If you don't even have J♣, count how many you're missing in an unbroken run from the top before the first one you do have — that's "without N." Either way, the level is N + 1. A Grand game only has the four Jacks as trump, so N tops out at 4 there;Null has no trump suit at all, so it has no matadors and no level — its four values are fixed instead (see the bid table below).
| Holding | Count | Level |
|---|---|---|
| Have J♣, not J♠ | With 1 | 2 |
| Have J♣, J♠, not J♥ | With 2 | 3 |
| Missing J♣, have J♠ | Without 1 | 2 |
| Missing J♣, J♠, J♥, have J♦ | Without 3 | 4 |
| Have all four Jacks, not the trump Ace | With 4 | 5 |
| Have all four Jacks and the trump Ace, not the trump 10 | With 5 | 6 |
| Have none of the four Jacks (Grand only goes to 4) | Without 4 | 5 |
Worked example: you hold J♣ and J♠, but not J♥. That's With 2 — level 3. Playing Spades: 3 × 11 = 33. Add Hand (you play without picking up the Skat) and it's level 4: 4 × 11 =44.
Worked example: playing Clubs, you hold all four Jacks plus the Ace and 10 of Clubs, but not the King. That's With 6 — level 7. 7 × 12 =84.
Trump-sequence and matador ("Spitzen") definitions per the Skat article on Wikipedia— the deck's own cheat sheet only tables the with/without-4 case, a printed-card space limit rather than a rule.
The bid values
18, 20, 22, 23, 24, 27, 30, 33, 35, 36, 40, 44, 45, 46, 48, 50, 55, 59, 60…96…
Null values (in red above) are fixed regardless of matadors: Null 23, Null Hand 35, Null Ouvert 46, Null Hand Ouvert 59.
Working out a specific hand's value by hand? The game value calculator does the arithmetic for you and shows the highest bid it supports.
What to bid, with this hand
Your safe bid is whatever your matador count and intended game already guarantee — bid to that number, not past it:
| Hand | Plan | Level | Safe bid |
|---|---|---|---|
| With 3 (missing only J♦) | Clubs | 4 | 48 |
| With 3, playing Hand | Clubs | 5 | 60 |
| Without 2 (have J♥, not J♣/J♠) | Hearts | 3 | 30 |
| No Jacks, weak hand | Null | — | 23 |
| With 1 | Diamonds | 2 | 18 |
Bidding higher than this table says your hand supports is exactly the trap the section below is about.
Overbidding
Two different ways this bites you. The obvious one: bidding past what your hand actually supports on purpose, hoping the Skat helps. It usually doesn't, and the promise still stands — fall short and it's an automatic loss, doubled.
The less obvious one: your matador count isn't fully locked in until you've seen the Skat. If you plan to pick it up, a Jack you were counting as "missing" (for a without-N count) or "held" (for a with-N count) can turn out to be sitting in those two cards, changing your level after you've already won the bid. The promise doesn't care how you got there — you still owe the number you bid, which can mean switching your planned suit, or leaning on Hand/Schneider/Schwarz to make up the difference, once you know what's actually in your hand.
Watch: bidding, in about 90 seconds
The Blue Rings deck doesn't change any of this math — it's the same game, same numbers. What changes is counting matadors by ring count instead of memorizing four Jacks by name. See the Blue Rings cheat sheet, or get the deck.