Board Game Arena

This afternoon a player (not me - I never get hands that good!) bid "Clubs hand ouvert", which he made easily (around 110 card points). Except that he was adjudged by the software to have failed and collected a hefty negative score. The third player wrote that he believed that an ouvert bid (in suits) implied a Schwarz bid, although he did write that he thought it an odd rule! I've never come across it previously, and neither had the player bidding it.

The rules page for BGA Skat directs us to the Wikipedia page, which would be fine except that Wiki provides a range of options without any indication of which ones should be considered the default ones. I understand that Skat is a traditional pub game and that therefore there are wide variations, but in a fixed site like BGA that is unsatisfactory. The Rules page absolutely needs to indicate which of the optional rules are the ones in play here.

It isn't the first time we'e had a problem along these lines - in the early days here Ramsch was undefined, and the version in use was not the one which (so far as I understand it) is the mainstream one. That is now sorted (although you have to read the Forum page to find the information. There really needs to be a definitive statement under the Rules heading. I'd offer to draft one myself but as a novice, and weak player, I don't feel qualified. Volunteers?

An ouvert game (apart from null, obviously) is always hand and Schneider, schwarz.

That's not pub rules. That's the game's rules as they've always been. It's even in the rules the Skat court takes for their rulings.

And because you complained so heavily yet again I've had a look at the rules that are linked.

And (strangely) both the Wikipedia rules page and the other rules page state that an ouvert game means hand and schwarz called beforehand.