NATIONAL GAMES.
There are certain games of cards which do not seem to belong to any particular family, but stand apart from other games, and have been played since their first invention with only trifling variations, giving rise to no offshoots bearing other names. These are usually the most popular games with the middle and lower classes in the countries in which they are found, and may be considered as distinctly national in character. Games that become popular with the masses always last longer than others, and the rules governing them are much better understood, and more firmly established. In the course of a century the English aristocracy have run the gamut of Quadrille, Ombre, Whist, Écarté, Bézique, Piquet, Rubicon, and Bridge; while the middle classes have stuck steadily to Cribbage for nearly two hundred years.
Six of these popular games are strikingly typical of the national character, both in their construction, and in the manner of playing them. These are: Skat in Germany; Cribbage in England; Piquet in France; Conquian in Mexico; Calabrasella in Italy; and Cassino in America. All these are excellent games, and have deservedly survived much more pretentious rivals.
With the exception of Skat, little is known of the exact origin of any of these games, although most of them may be traced by their resemblance to more ancient forms. Skat is the most modern, and to-day the most popular, many persons thinking it superior to Whist. The game seems to have originated among the farmers of Thuringia, a province of Saxony, and was probably a variation of the Wendish game of Schapskopf. The first mention of Skat that we can find is in an article in the “Osterländer Blättern,” in 1818. Thirty years later Professor Hempel of Altenburg published the rules and principles of the game under the title: “Das Skatspiel, von J.F.L.H.” It is said that he learned the game from a friend, who had been taught it by a Wendish coachman in his employ. The game spread rapidly, and soon became popular all over Germany, but with many minor variations in the details of play. To settle these, a Skat congress was finally held in Altenburg in 1886. This was succeeded by others in Leipzic and Dresden, and the result of these meetings has been to weed out all the minor differences in play, and to settle upon a universal code of laws for the game, which is called Reichs-Skat.
In America, Reichs-Skat is no longer played; the value of some of the games is changed, and all the bidding is by Zahlen-reizen. In all the text-books on Skat which we have examined, this fact has been entirely overlooked.