   sheepshead or sheephead is a trick-taking card game related to the skat family of games. it is the americanized version of a card game that originated in central europe in the late 18th century under the german name schafkopf. although schafkopf literally means "sheepshead," it has nothing to do with sheep. the term probably was derived and translated incorrectly from middle high german and referred to playing cards on a barrel head (from kopf, meaning head, and schaff, meaning a barrel). since kings are very weak cards, some say that playing the game was a way to insult the kaiser without getting your head chopped off. in the united states, sheepshead is most commonly played in wisconsin as well as the german counties in southern indiana, which has large german-american populations, and on the internet. numerous tournaments are held throughout wisconsin during the year, with the largest tournament being the "nationals", held annually during a weekend in september, october or november, and mini-tournaments held hourly throughout germanfest in milwaukee during the last weekend of each july. the 2012 "nationals" was held in wisconsin dells on september 21-22, 2012. the 2013 "nationals" will be held on october 18-19, 2013, also in wisconsin dells. sheepshead is most commonly played by five players,sheepshead basic rules, sheepshead.org, retrieved june 10, 2008 but variants exist to allow for two to eight players. there are also many other variants to the game rules, and many interesting slang terms used with the game. ==rules== ===preparation=== sheepshead is played with 7-8-9-10-j-q-k-a in four suits, for a total of 32 cards. this is also known as a piquet deck, as opposed to the 52 or 54 present in a full french deck (also known as a poker deck, or a regular deck of playing cards). a sheepshead deck is made by removing all of the jokers, sixes, fives, fours, threes, and twos from a standard deck. ===card strength=== card strength in sheepshead is different from in most other games. it is
Anglo-American_playing_card_games German_playing_card_games Schafkopf