Officers' Skat as in a normal hand (face up to the player); this is called a 'half-open' ("halb-offenes") game. In Admirals' Skat, each player is given five cards face down, five face up and five in their hand. The remaining two cards are set aside as skat or "stick" ("Stock"). The trump suit and who plays first is then determined as usual by the skat with overbidding. This variant is also called "with overbidding" ("mit Reizen"). According to Grupp (1975), the name Officers' Skat ("Offiziers-Skat" ) came from the fact that "officers only socialised with the men when they were in the
History of Skat association was founded. The second Skat Congress also failed due to this issue. On 12 March 1899, in Halle (Saale) at the Third Skat Congress, the German Skat Association was founded.Those present could still not agree on a final set of rules. Although suit bidding was declared an official form of the game, point bidding was still allowed. The Congress chose Altenburg as the headquarters of the new association. A year earlier a comparable association had been founded in the United States: the "North American Skat League". Skat had been played in the USA since at least 1876. Up to