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Schafkopf is a point-trick game, normally played with a German suited 32 card pack. As in several related games, the card values are ace=11, ten=10, king=4, over=3, under=2, but Schafkopf has the special feature that the overs and unders are permanent trumps, ranking above the ace. Schafkopf is considered to be the national card game of Bavaria. It is also played, probably in several different versions, in the south-east of Germany.

Rules of the game will eventually be included here. Meanwhile here is a link to the Schafkopfschule which has all kinds of information about the game, including rules in both German and English. Another set of Bavarian Schafkopf Rules in German and English is available on the Gauverband Nordamerika site.

The Schafkopf-Links page has numerous links to useful Schafkopf sites and information.

Players in North America can obtain Bavarian Schafkopf cards from TaroBear's Lair.

The largest web site for playing Schafkopf on line, with over 80,000 users in spring 2009, is Sauspiel where you can play for fun or real money. (The basic and most common contract in Bavarian Schafkopf is one in which the bidder calls an ace, whose holder becomes his partner. The aces in the Bavarian pack are known as Säue - sows - hence the name of the site.)

You can download Michael Fischer's Schafkopf computer program for Windows from his Cutesoft Page.

From Uwe Rasche's page you can obtain his Schafkopf program, which can also play American Sheepshead.

You can play Schafkopf online for fun or for real money at Playjack. The same game can be played free without registration through the Spiele Zone site.

You can play Bavarian Schafkopf on line at inetplay.de.

In the nineteenth century Schafkopf was taken to the USA by German emigrants, where it became Sheepshead, several versions of which are still popular in Wisconsin and other states with a significant population of German descent.

Schafkopf, like most German games, is normally played clockwise, but Tanno Gerritsen reports that they play counter-clockwise in the village of Aichstetten, in the Württemberg part of the Allgäu, and maybe in other part of that region as well.