History
Skat was developed by the members of the Brommesche Tarok-Gesellschaft between 1810 and 1817 in Altenburg, in what is now the Federated State of Thuringia, Germany, based on the three-player game of Tarock, also known as Tarot, and the four-player game of Schafkopf (the American equivalent being Sheepshead). In the earliest known form of the game, the player in prior position was dealt twelve cards to the other players' ten each, made two discards, constituting the skat, and then announced a contract. But the main innovation of this new game was then that of the Bidding process.
The first text book on the rules of Skat was published in 1848 by a secondary school Professor called J. F. L. Hempel. Nevertheless, the rules continued to differ by region until the first attempt to set them in order was made by a congress of Skat players on Saturday, 7 August 1886 in Altenburg, being the first official rules finally published in book form in 1888 by Theodor Thomas of Leipzig. The current rules, followed by both the ISPA and the German Skat Federation, date from Jan. 1, 1999.
The very word Skat is a Tarok term deriving from the Italian word scarto, "scartare", which means to discard or reject, and its derivative "scatola", a box, or a place for safe-keeping. The word scarto is one still used in other Italian card games to this day, and in some German works the word is found spelled "scat".
Read more about this topic: Skat (card Game)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“There is no history of how bad became better.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The history of progress is written in the blood of men and women who have dared to espouse an unpopular cause, as, for instance, the black man’s right to his body, or woman’s right to her soul.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)