When one player takes no trick in a Ramsch, the player with the greater number of points loses 30. If two players take no trick, the loss is 50 points.
All Guckis lose double if they fail, so that if a player announces a Gucki Nullo and loses it, he will lose 30; but if he won it he would get 15 only. If a player has a Gucki Null Ouvert, he must announce that it is to be played open before he touches the skat cards. It is then worth 30 if won; 60 if lost.
Passt-mir-nicht tournées all lose double if they fail, but win the usual number of points if they succeed.
Multipliers. The foregoing are simply the standard counting values of these various games. In calculating the actual value of a player’s game, in order to see how much he may safely offer in the bidding, and how much he would win if successful in his undertaking, these standard values are multiplied as follows:—
Five classes of games are recognized, beginning with the lowest, in which the player gets the necessary 61 points, but does not make his adversaries schneider. This is simply called “game,” and as it must always be either won or lost, it is a constant factor. The value of the game is 1, and each better game is numbered in regular order, the five varieties being as follows:
The Game, 1. Schneider, 2. Schwarz announced or Schwarz, 3. Schwarz after announcing Schneider, 4. Schwarz announced, 5.
These numbers are added to the number of Matadores, and the total thus found is multiplied by the unit value of the game. For instance: A player has obtained the privilege of playing on a bid of thirty. His game is a Solo in hearts, in which he holds the three highest Matadores and announces schneider in advance. His game multiplier is therefore 3 (for the announced schneider), to which he adds 3 more for the Matadores, 6 altogether. The unit value of a heart Solo being 10, he could have gone on bidding to 60 had it been necessary, and he will win 60 from each of his adversaries if he succeeds in reaching 91 points in the counting cards he takes in in his tricks, together with what he finds in the Skat.
If his adversaries got to 30 with their counting cards, he would have lost 60 to each of them, although he bid only 30, because he announced his game as schneider, and did not make it. Had he not announced the schneider, and reached 91 or more in his counting cards, he would have won a game worth 50, losing the extra multiplier by not announcing the schneider in advance; for a schneider made without announcing it is worth only 2.
In reckoning the value of a game it is always safer to bid on playing “with” than “without” Matadores in a Solo or Tourné; because, although you may have a hand “without four,” you may find a Wenzel in the Skat, and if it is the club Jack you lose three multipliers at once.