Ruling — Skull King

You asked

How do I play?

Answered counted as answered

Asked with: Skull Kingbg-150145-en-1e

Skull King is a trick-taking game in which players bid the exact number of tricks they predict they will win each round.[1] The game is played over 10 rounds.[2]

Setup and Dealing

1. At the start of each round, the entire deck, including all cards played in the previous round, is shuffled.[2]

2. One card is dealt to each player in the first round, two in the second, and so on, increasing by one card each round until 10 cards are dealt in the tenth round.[2]

Gameplay

1. Once bidding is complete, the player to the left of the dealer leads the first trick by playing a card face up in the center of the table.[3]

2. In clockwise order, each other player plays a card following the rules of the suit in play.[3][4]

3. The first card played in a trick sets the pattern (suit) that must be followed; players must play that suit if they have one.[4]

4. If a player plays a different non-trump suit than the suit in play, their card will lose, even if it is the highest number played.[5]

5. Black bordered cards (Jolly Roger) are the trump suit and are ranked higher than the other three colors of numbered cards.[4] A black card will beat any standard suit card, even one of a greater numbered value.[5]

6. Cards without numbers do not need to follow suit.[4]

7. When leading a trick, a player may choose to play a suit card or a special card.[6]

8. If an Escape, Tigress as an escape, or Loot is led, the next player sets the suit that must be followed (unless they also play one of those cards, which defers setting the suit to the next player).[6]

9. If a Mermaid, Pirate, Skull King, Tigress as a Pirate, Kraken, or White Whale leads a trick, there is no suit to follow for that trick, and each player may play any card they choose.[6]

10. The person who played the highest-ranking card wins the trick, gathers the cards into a stack, and places the stack in front of them.[3]

11. The winner of the trick plays a card to lead the next trick.[3]

12. Play continues until all tricks in that round have been played.[3]

Scoring and Ending the Game

1. Tally each player's score, including any bonus points earned, on the scorepad.[3]

2. The player to the dealer's left becomes the new dealer.[3]

3. After the tenth round is completed, final scores are tallied.[3]

4. The player with the highest score is declared the victor and is appointed as the pirate captain of the seven seas.[3][1]

[1] RULEBOOK Skull King — Rulebook · p.3 · WATCH OUR HOW TO PLAY VIDEO: · OVERVIEW · Contents · Special Cards · Expansion Cards · Additional Items

[2] RULEBOOK Skull King — Rulebook · p.6 · Key Terms · Dealing Cards

[3] RULEBOOK Skull King — Rulebook · p.13 · ON YOUR TURN

[4] RULEBOOK Skull King — Rulebook · p.5 · Key Terms

[5] RULEBOOK Skull King — Rulebook · p.9 · Suit Cards

[6] RULEBOOK Skull King — Rulebook · p.12 · Leading with Special Cards · Leading with an Escape · Leading with a Character

That settles it — whose turn was it?

🔧 debug — where this ruling came from

outcome: ANSWERED — Answered
corpus profile: live,vps
answerer pin (deploy-frozen, attribution only): gemma4:26b think:false 5571076f3d70
timings: search 83 ms · ask 6527 ms · total 15155 ms
single-flight (PR-5): queued 8544 ms · generation 6611 ms
retrieval refs (raw) — what the PASSAGE SEARCH returned, not what the answerer read: [{"page": 13, "score": 0.048412, "snippet": "Once bidding is complete, the player to the left of the dealer leads out the first trick by playing a card face up in the center of the table. In clockwise order, each other player plays a card following the rules outlined in the previous sections. The person who played the highest-ranking card wins", "headingPath": "ON YOUR TURN", "sharpsignalDocId": 115}, {"page": 21, "score": 0.046635, "snippet": "Shuffle and deal 3 hands (yes, you read that correctly). Y ou'll bid and play following the same rules as normal, but with one spooky twist. Y ou'll be joined by Graybeard's ghost! However, he'll need a little help from you to play his cards (not having a body is a real bummer). Each round, you and ", "headingPath": "Two-Player Rules", "sharpsignalDocId": 115}, {"page": 12, "score": 0.046544, "snippet": "When you lead a trick, you may choose to play either a suit card or a special card. When a special card is led, the rules for the suit in play are altered as follows: When an Escape, Tigress as an escape, or Loot is lead, the next player sets the suit that must be followed, unless they play one of t", "headingPath": "Leading with Special Cards · Leading with an Escape · Leading with a Character", "sharpsignalDocId": 115}, {"page": 5, "score": 0.045695, "snippet": "For those unfamiliar with these waters. Trick : Consists of each player, in clockwise order, playing 1 card face-up to the table. The person who plays the highest valued card wins and takes the trick. The player gathers the cards in a stack before them. Round : Consisting of 1 or more tricks. The nu", "headingPath": "Key Terms", "sharpsignalDocId": 115}, {"page": 17, "score": 0.04526, "snippet": "(A) Name: Pretty sure you know what goes here. (B) Round: Round number (you typically play 10). (C) Cards Dealt: Usually same as the round number. (D) Bid and Result: Number of tricks you predict to win that round followed by the amount you actually won. (E) Bi d Points: Points earned or lost based ", "headingPath": "The Scoresheet", "sharpsignalDocId": 115}, {"page": 6, "score": 0.044388, "snippet": "6 Skull King is played over 10 rounds. 1 card is dealt to each player in the first round, 2 are dealt in the second, and so on, ending with 10 cards dealt to each player in round 10. The entire deck, including all cards played in the previous round, is shuffled at the start of each round. 8 Players ", "headingPath": "Key Terms · Dealing Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 115}, {"page": 14, "score": 0.04311, "snippet": "There are two different scoring systems you can choose from when playing Skull King . Both are fun and unique. Need help scoring? Try the Grandpa Beck's Scoring App ! The classic scoring system for Skull King , excellent for bold and casual play rife with risk and reward where scores swing like sail", "headingPath": "SCORING · The Skull King's Scoring · Bidding One or More", "sharpsignalDocId": 115}, {"page": 7, "score": 0.029851, "snippet": "After the cards are dealt and you've studied your hand, you'll decide the exact number of tricks you predict you will win in that round. Remember, the higher a card's value, the more likely you are to win a trick. Once you're all ready, you'll pound your fists on the table in unison three times whil", "headingPath": "Bidding", "sharpsignalDocId": 115}]
citations (raw) — what the answer cited, chosen from a retrieval this page cannot show: [{"page": 3, "quote": null, "headingPath": "WATCH OUR HOW TO PLAY VIDEO: · OVERVIEW · Contents · Special Cards · Expansion Cards · Additional Items", "sharpsignalDocId": 115}, {"page": 6, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Key Terms · Dealing Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 115}, {"page": 13, "quote": null, "headingPath": "ON YOUR TURN", "sharpsignalDocId": 115}, {"page": 5, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Key Terms", "sharpsignalDocId": 115}, {"page": 9, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Suit Cards", "sharpsignalDocId": 115}, {"page": 12, "quote": null, "headingPath": "Leading with Special Cards · Leading with an Escape · Leading with a Character", "sharpsignalDocId": 115}]
boost provenance — errata + base rulebook (E2/E3): no registered errata card matched this query; base rulebook doc 115 boosted; rulesage.errata.boost-enabled=true, rulesage.errata.supersedence-enabled=true
base rulebook doc 115 boosted
answered-before recall: this ruling was answered, so past rulings were not offered
similarity threshold in force: 0.55 (rulesage.answered-before.similarity-threshold; the exact-question tier is not gated by it)
answer fence: passed — letter density 0.90556 of 1959 non-space chars (floor 0.45); 0 glyph-index tokens (max 2)
debug row recorded: Aug 25, 2026 16:14 UTC

retrieval — what the passage search returned

what this block IS: the PASSAGE SEARCH's own results — the same search that fills this page's closest-passages list — and NOT the passages the answerer read. Answering runs its OWN retrieval: a far wider candidate pool, re-ranked down to a final handful, plus floors this search never applies — the base rulebook, surviving errata corrections, and one slot per book on a multi-book read. Each of those armed only if THIS ask sent what it needs: the boost block names the ids it forwarded, and the scope line names the books it read. A document the answer CITES that no row here names is therefore EXPECTED, not a defect: two searches, two candidate pools, two orders. The answerer's own final rows are shown in their own block below, beside these and never mixed into them.

score = the fused retrieval score (reciprocal-rank fusion over the search arms) — NOT a cosine similarity. This ruling ran the THREE-ARM fuse (full-text + vector + the doc-priority boost arm, which carried the base rulebook and/or the errata corrections this query matched), whose arithmetic ceiling is 0.04918 — all three arms ranking the same chunk #1 (ceiling = arms/(k+1) at k=60). The measured healthy band 0.016–0.033 was measured on TWO-arm asks and does not bound this one: its high end is the two-arm ceiling, and a third arm has room above it. A chunk only one arm ranked highly lands near 0.016 (that one arm's #1 vote), so 0.03 here is an excellent hit, not a 3% match.

per-arm ranks (the rank each search arm gave a chunk): NOT DISCLOSED by the gateway. Fusion happens gateway-side and only the FUSED score crosses the wire, so rulesage cannot show them without a gateway change. The rank column below is the FUSED rank (position in the returned list), which is real.

token count per chunk: NOT DISCLOSED — chunk token counts are not reported on the ask path. The character counts below are of the bounded snippet/quote rulesage actually received — a real measurement of what we hold, never an estimate of the chunk.

fused rank	document	heading	page	fused RRF score	snippet chars
#1	RULEBOOK Skull King — Rulebook (corpus doc 115)	ON YOUR TURN	p.13	0.048412 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#2	RULEBOOK Skull King — Rulebook (corpus doc 115)	Two-Player Rules	p.21	0.046635 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#3	RULEBOOK Skull King — Rulebook (corpus doc 115)	Leading with Special Cards · Leading with an Escape · Leading with a Character	p.12	0.046544 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#4	RULEBOOK Skull King — Rulebook (corpus doc 115)	Key Terms	p.5	0.045695 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#5	RULEBOOK Skull King — Rulebook (corpus doc 115)	The Scoresheet	p.17	0.04526 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#6	RULEBOOK Skull King — Rulebook (corpus doc 115)	Key Terms · Dealing Cards	p.6	0.044388 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#7	RULEBOOK Skull King — Rulebook (corpus doc 115)	SCORING · The Skull King's Scoring · Bidding One or More	p.14	0.04311 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300
#8	RULEBOOK Skull King — Rulebook (corpus doc 115)	Bidding	p.7	0.029851 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	300

what the answerer read — the passages it actually had in front of it

what this block IS: the passages the ANSWERING read put in front of the answerer, in the order it read them — the other half of the two reads described above, and the one that decides what the answer could possibly say. Each row names the book it came from and where in that book it sits, what it scored when the search arms were fused, which arm carried it there, and whether the re-ranker chose it or a floor guaranteed it a slot. A row here that no passage-search row names is EXPECTED: a far wider pool, re-ranked, with floors the passage search never applies.

candidate pool: the answering read scored 28 passages, out of a ceiling of 80 set gateway-side. Both figures are reported by the gateway for THIS ask — measurements of what actually happened, not constants read out of anyone's source and printed here on faith.

floors armed for this ask: the base rulebook — armed · surviving errata corrections — not armed · one slot per book on a multi-book read — not armed. Every floor is stated on every ask, armed or not, so a floor that did not apply here is never mistaken for one this app does not know about.

arms fused for this ask: vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm. Stated separately from the rows because an arm that ran and carried nothing is a different fact from an arm that never ran.

read at	document	heading	page	fused rank	fused RRF score	carried by	how it got its slot
#1	RULEBOOK Skull King — Rulebook (corpus doc 115)	ON YOUR TURN	p.13	#1	0.048412 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#2	RULEBOOK Skull King — Rulebook (corpus doc 115)	YE BE WARNED! · Leviathans From The Depths	p.23	#17	0.026709 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text	the re-ranker chose it
#3	RULEBOOK Skull King — Rulebook (corpus doc 115)	WATCH OUR HOW TO PLAY VIDEO: · OVERVIEW · Contents · Special Cards · Expansion Cards · Additional Items	p.3	#14	0.026876 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text	the re-ranker chose it
#4	RULEBOOK Skull King — Rulebook (corpus doc 115)	Two-Player Rules	p.21	#2	0.046635 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#5	RULEBOOK Skull King — Rulebook (corpus doc 115)	Key Terms	p.5	#4	0.045695 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#6	RULEBOOK Skull King — Rulebook (corpus doc 115)	Suit Cards	p.9	#11	0.029116 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text	the re-ranker chose it
#7	RULEBOOK Skull King — Rulebook (corpus doc 115)	Key Terms · Dealing Cards	p.6	#6	0.044388 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it
#8	RULEBOOK Skull King — Rulebook (corpus doc 115)	Leading with Special Cards · Leading with an Escape · Leading with a Character	p.12	#3	0.046544 (healthy, below this ruling's 3-arm ceiling 0.04918 (the measured band 0.016–0.033 was taken on two-arm asks and does not bound a 3-arm one))	vector + full-text + the doc-priority boost arm	the re-ranker chose it

chosen chunks — what the answer actually cited

#	document	heading	page	quote chars
[1]	RULEBOOK Skull King — Rulebook (corpus doc 115)	WATCH OUR HOW TO PLAY VIDEO: · OVERVIEW · Contents · Special Cards · Expansion Cards · Additional Items	p.3	no quote on the wire
[2]	RULEBOOK Skull King — Rulebook (corpus doc 115)	Key Terms · Dealing Cards	p.6	no quote on the wire
[3]	RULEBOOK Skull King — Rulebook (corpus doc 115)	ON YOUR TURN	p.13	no quote on the wire
[4]	RULEBOOK Skull King — Rulebook (corpus doc 115)	Key Terms	p.5	no quote on the wire
[5]	RULEBOOK Skull King — Rulebook (corpus doc 115)	Suit Cards	p.9	no quote on the wire
[6]	RULEBOOK Skull King — Rulebook (corpus doc 115)	Leading with Special Cards · Leading with an Escape · Leading with a Character	p.12	no quote on the wire

generation — timing and the path taken

timing split: retrieval 83 ms · first delta 2003 ms · total 15155 ms (retrieval and first-delta both measured from the START of gateway work, so first-delta INCLUDES retrieval — do not subtract)
full breakdown: queued 8544 ms · retrieval 83 ms · ask 6527 ms · gateway work 6611 ms · total 15155 ms
tokens in (the prompt the answerer read): 1959
tokens out (what the answerer generated): 613
tok/sec: 134.0 tok/sec — 613 output tokens in 4.575 s of generation
live seat (read from the running child): answering — gemma4:26b think:false · num_ctx 32768 (live-verified 7s ago)
answerer host (measured by rulesage): reachable (for 22h, checked 6s ago)
answerer node (the seat proxy's own header — this probe, not this ask): node1
stream path: streamed — the gateway pushed at least one accumulated draft
watchdog: first-token watchdog: 30s per arming window (rulesage.table.first-token-watchdog-seconds), re-armed once by the passages frame — so the worst case before a reader falls back to polling is 60s. Whether it actually fired is a BROWSER-side decision that never reaches the server, so it is not recorded here. The stream path above is the server's half of that story: whether a delta was emitted at all.
num_ctx · think posture: both are the CHILD's settings, not rulesage's, and no ask reply carries them — an answer never states which context window or think posture produced it. The live-seat line above reads them from the running child instead, where the gateway can answer for itself; it describes the child NOW, not this ask.

disposition

outcome: ANSWERED — Answered
abstain rationale (n/a — this ruling answered): answered — no abstain rationale applies

setup-shape — why the checklist band did or didn't render

decision: NOT_SETUP_SHAPED — no setup-shape pattern matched this question

errata registry — what the gate above had to match against

this game registers NO errata cards (edition 37), so "no registered errata card matched" above could never have matched one

Errata scope: the gate above matched this ruling's own edition only. When an ask also reads an expansion, that expansion's own registered errata cards stay outside the match — a stated phase-1 limitation, not a failed lookup.