A Frage bidder could be overcalled by a Solo and either could be overcalled by the same contract in a higher-ranking suit, the suits ranking in the same order as in the modern game.

There were just two contracts – Frage and Solo – and forehand opened the bidding or passed. These describe a game for 3 players with German-suited cards who received 10 each in packets of 3, 2, 3 and 2, the two remaining cards being dealt to the table as a talon known as the Scat. The earliest recorded rules for 'Scat' date to 1835, by when it was already popular in the Kingdom of Saxony, especially in the Duchy of Altenburg and the surrounding area. But the main innovation of this new game was that of the bidding process. He then made two discards, constituting the Skat, and announced a contract. In the earliest known form of the game, the player in the first seat was dealt twelve cards and the other two players ten each. It has become the most loved and widely played German card game, especially in German-speaking regions. Skat is based on the three-player game of Tarock (German for Tarot) and the four-player game of Schafkopf (forerunner of the American game Sheepshead).

Skat was developed by the members of a local Tarock club, the Brommesche Tarok-Gesellschaft around 1810–1813 in Altenburg, in what is now the State of Thuringia, Germany.