Welcome to the Internet Skat Server (ISS)

News - Software - Registration - Links

Other languages:
(We need translations of this webpage and the GUI. Volunteers? )

ISS is a new internet server that lets you play skat - a popular German card game. The major features of ISS are as follows: If you'd like to check it out, please register here, install SkatGUI, start it, and log-on using the password sent in the registration email.

Some players now meet

Mondays 14:00 MST

on ISS. Come and join us. Everybody is welcome. Here you have the chance to learn from one of the best players in North America ("miester")!

In case ISS is running and you can't connect with the latest version of SkatGUI using ports 8000, 7000, or 80, please let us know.

Send constructive feedback, bug reports, feature requests, and money to mburo#cs.ualberta.ca (replace # by @).

Check ISS Status

News

Plans

Server Etiquette

Cheating

Playing card games on the internet raises cheating concerns, as players can collude using arbitrary communication channels. ISS implements two moderate measures to limit communication within ISS during games: players who are engaged in one or more games are not allowed to talk to other users and players with identical IP or email addresses are flagged in the "IP" column in SkatGUI result table by sharing entries other than ".".

Another concern is "perfect-recall", whereby players take note of the trick history by external means such as pencil and paper or external programs running on the side. While this probably is not in the original spirit of playing card games, it can't be prevented when playing on-line. Players need to decide for themselves whether they want to further their memory skills or to take a shortcut. In any case, memorizing more is correlated with playing cardgames better, regardless how it's done. SkatGUI gives players access to the entire trick history if they wish to use that information when run in "noob" mode.

Privacy

ISS Software

SkatGUI

SkatGUI is a graphical user interface for ISS. It requires Java version >= 1.6 to run.

Installation:
  1. If you don't have Java on your computer, visit www.java.com to install it by clicking on the "Free Java Download" button and following the instructions.

  2. Download SkatGUI and save it to your desktop.
To start SkatGUI, double click on its icon or issue java -jar skatgui.jar in a shell console. If nothing happens, you don't have Java installed - see step 1 above.

A description of the SkatGUI Table Window Guide is given here.

SkatGUI creates three files: In case of a crash, the next time SkatGUI is started it will ask for permission to send skatgui-bugreport.txt to the server to inform us about the issue. SkatGUI only transmits ISS related data.

As ISS is under active development, from time to time SkatGUI upgrades will become necessary. SkatGUI will inform you about this.

First Steps in SkatGUI

Double-clicking the SkatGUI icon on your desktop starts the program. It first displays a log-in window. After typing in your moniker and the password from the email, clicking the log-in button will connect you to ISS. On the left hand side of the opened window you will see a list of connected players. Among them will be ernie, bert, kermit1, kermit2, zoot1, and zoot2. These are Skat programs you can play with if not enough human players are available.

In the main window you can talk to other players by clicking on their name on the player list and typing text in the "Message To" input line followed by hitting the Enter key. Before playing you have to create a table. The easiest way to do this is by selecting the "Create Table" tab at the top of the window and clicking the "3 players" button in the Join/Create panel. A new table will appear on the table list and a table window will open. Other players can join you by clicking on a join field. In the game window you can talk to players using the "Input" line. You can also invite players by entering "@invite player-name" there. Clicking the "Ready" button starts a game once 3 players have joined the table. To get more information about the game window click on the "Options" menu item followed by "Help".

Skat Program Interface

Connecting skat programs written in Java or C++ to ISS is straight-forward. The required classes can be found in the src/client and c++/src/ directories in the source code tar archive. More information is given in file README-clients.

Download client.tgz

License

ISS client software is (c) Michael Buro, Jeff Long, Jan Schaefer, Nathan Taylor and licensed under GPLv3.

Skat Links

Skat Rules + Variants + Links
Skat for Beginners
International Skat Players Association
List of Skat Servers
David Parlett's Skat Pages

German Skat Terms Translated

Here is a short list of German skat terms translated into English:
last modified on MST; you are visitor # since Oct/16/2007