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
Pinochle queens for five points, and jacks and nines are worth zero. An even simpler method has aces, tens, and kings worth 10 (and known as "counters"), and everything else zero ("garbage"). Since all points are multiples of ten in the third method, most players drop the redundant zero. Aces, tens, and kings won in tricks are worth one point. The meld scoring can also avoid the zero in the tenth place. Melds like 1,000 aces are thus worth 100. The terms "1,000 aces", "800 kings" and so on are often used, even though the point values are one-tenth. Two-handed pinochle