Sheepshead (card game) Sheepshead (card game) Sheepshead or Sheephead is a trick-taking card game invented by Julius Meinen. It is the Americanized version of Bavaria's national card game, Schafkopf, albeit the latter is played with Bavarian-pattern cards unlike its American descendant. Sheepshead is most commonly played by five players, but variants exist to allow for two to eight players. There are also many other variants to the game rules, and many slang terms used with the game. Schafkopf literally means "sheep's head" and may refer to the practice going back over a century of recording the score by drawing a stylised head of
Napoleon (card game) in Strathclyde. Despite its title and allusions, it is not recorded before the last third of the nineteenth century, and may have been first named after Napoleon III. The old game of Napoleon consists simply of five cards dealt out singly with the various players bidding in their turn how many tricks they think they can make. The player to the dealer's left has the privilege of bidding first, and then every player after him may bid up to the limit, Napoleon, which is a declaration to take all five tricks. Whoever bids highest leads first, the card led determining