Early design changes

A playing card is a piece of specially prepared heavy paper, thin card, or thin plastic, figured with distinguishing motifs and used as one of a set for playing card games. Playing cards are typically palm-sized for convenient handling and since the mid 20th century have sometimes been manufactured from plastic. A complete set of cards is called a pack or deck, and the set of cards held at one time by a player during a game is commonly called their hand. A deck of cards may be used for playing a great variety of card games, some of which may also incorporate gambling. Because playing cards are both standardized and commonly available, they are often adapted for other uses, such as magic tricks, cartomancy, encryption, boardgames, or building a house of cards. The first ever printed cards were developed and crafted in Dresden, Germany.

The front (or "face") of each card carries markings that distinguish it from the other cards in the deck and determine its use under the rules of the game being played. The back of each card is identical for all cards in any particular deck, and usually of a single color or formalized design. The back of playing cards is sometimes used for advertising. For most games, the cards are assembled into a deck, and their order is randomized by shuffling.Early history A Chinese playing card dated c. 1400 AD, Ming Dynasty, found near Turfan, measuring 9.5 by 3.5 cm

Playing cards were found in China as early as the 9th century during the Tang Dynasty (618–907), when relatives of a princess played a "leaf game". The Tang writer Su E (obtained a jinshi degree in 885) stated that Princess Tongchang (?–870), daughter of Emperor Yizong of Tang (r. 860–874), played the leaf game with members of the Wei clan to pass the time. The Song Dynasty (960–1279) scholar Ouyang Xiu (1007–1072) asserted that card games existed since the mid Tang Dynasty and associated their invention with the simultaneous development of using sheets or pages instead of paper rolls as a writing medium A book called Yezi Gexi was allegedly written by a Tang era woman, and was commented on by Chinese writers of subsequent dynasties.

Black Lady

The fanciful design and manufacturer's logo commonly displayed on the Ace of Spades began under the reign of James I of England, who passed a law requiring an insignia on that card as proof of payment of a tax on local manufacture of cards. Until August 4, 1960, decks of playing cards printed and sold in the United Kingdom were liable for taxable duty and the Ace of Spades carried an indication of the name of the printer and the fact that taxation had been paid on the cards.[notes 1] The packs were also sealed with a government duty wrapper.

Though specific design elements of the court cards are rarely used in game play and many differ between designs, a few are notable. The Jack of Spades, Jack of Hearts, and King of Diamonds are drawn in profile, while the rest of the courts are shown in full face; these cards are commonly called "one-eyed". When deciding which cards are to be made wild in some games, the phrase "acey, deucey, one-eyed jack" (or "deuces, aces, one-eyed faces") is sometimes used, which means that aces, twos, and the one-eyed jacks are all wild. The King of Hearts is the only King with no mustache, and is also typically shown with a sword behind his head, making him appear to be stabbing himself. The axe held by the King of Diamonds is behind his head with the blade facing toward him. This leads to the nickname "suicide kings". The Jack of Diamonds is sometimes known as "laughing boy". The King of Diamonds is traditionally armed with an axe while the other three kings are armed with swords, and thus the King of Diamonds is sometimes referred to as "the man with the axe" because of this. This is the basis of the trump "one-eyed jacks and the man with the axe". The Ace of Spades, unique in its large, ornate spade, is sometimes said to be the death card, and in some games is used as a trump card. The Queen of Spades usually holds a scepter and is sometimes known as "the bedpost queen", though more often she is called "Black Lady". In many decks, the Queen of Clubs holds a flower. She is thus known as the "flower Queen", though this design element is among the most variable; the standard Bicycle Poker deck depicts all Queens with a flower styled according to their suit.

Card games

Card games(solitaire, especially) are frequently standard features on computers (seen here a GNOME version of solitaire). There are theories about who the court cards represent. For example, the Queen of Hearts is believed by some to be a representation of Elizabeth of York—the Queen consort of King Henry VII of England, or it is sometimes believed to be a representation of Anne Boleyn, the second wife of Henry VIII. The United States Playing Card Company suggests that in the past, the King of Hearts was Charlemagne, the King of Diamonds was Julius Caesar, the King of Clubs was Alexander the Great, and the King of Spades was the Biblical King David (see King (playing card)). However the Kings, Queens and Jacks of standard Anglo-American cards today do not represent anyone in particular. They stem from designs produced in Rouen before 1516, and by 1540–67 these Rouen designs show well executed pictures in the court cards with the typical court costumes of the time. In these early cards the Jack of Spades, Jack of Hearts, and King of Diamonds are shown from the rear, with their heads turned back over the shoulder so that they are seen in profile; however, the Rouen cards were so badly copied in England that the current designs are gross distortions of the originals.

Other oddities such as the lack of a moustache on the King of Hearts also have little significance. The King of Hearts did originally have a moustache but it was lost by poor copying of the original design.[citation needed] Similarly the objects carried by the court cards have no significance. They merely differentiate one court card from another and have also become distorted over time.

The most common sizes for playing cards are poker size (2½in × 3½in; 63 mm × 88 mm, or B8 size according to ISO 216) and bridge size (2¼in × 3½in, approx. 56 mm × 88 mm), the latter being narrower, and thus more suitable for games such as bridge in which a large number of cards must be held concealed in a player's hand. Interestingly, in most casino poker games, the bridge-sized card is used; the use of less material means that a bridge deck is slightly cheaper to make, and a casino may use many thousands of decks per day so the minute per-deck savings add up. Other sizes are also available, such as a smaller size (usually 1¾in × 2⅝in, approx. 44 mm × 66 mm) for solitaire, tall narrow designs (usually 1¼in × 3in) for travel and larger ones for card tricks. The weight of an average B8-sized playing card is 0.063 oz (1.8g), a deck 3.3 oz (94g).

Additional design

Some decks include additional design elements. Casino blackjack decks may include markings intended for a machine to check the ranks of cards, or shifts in rank location to allow a manual check via inlaid mirror. Many casino decks and solitaire decks have four indices instead of the usual two. Many decks have large indices, largely for use in stud poker games, where being able to read cards from a distance is a benefit and hand sizes are small. Some decks use four colors for the suits in order to make it easier to tell them apart: the most common set of colors is black (spades ♠), red (hearts ♥), blue (diamonds ♦) and green (clubs ♣). Another common color set is borrowed from the German suits and uses green Spades and yellow Diamonds (as the comparable German suits are Leaves and Bells respectively; see below) with red Hearts and black Clubs.

When giving the full written name of a specific card, the rank is given first followed by the suit, e.g., "Ace of Spades". Shorthand notation may list the rank first "A♠" (as is typical when discussing poker) or list the suit first (as is typical in listing several cards in bridge) "♠AKQ". Tens may be either abbreviated to T or written as 10.Piquet

The piquet deck is a subset of the French-suited 52-card deck, with all values from 2 through 6 in each suit removed. The resulting 32-card deck is notable for its use in a variety of games; a trick-taking game from the 1300s, Piquet, gave the deck its most common name, and the game of Belote, currently the most popular card game in France, also uses this deck. West German players adopted the deck for the game of Skat (the traditional Skat deck uses German suits; see below).

The game of Pinochle, which evolved from the French game Bezique, uses a deck composed of two copies of each Anglo-American card with values from 9 through King and Ace. A deck with the same composition, but different card art, is available in Europe for the very popular German game of Doppelkopf, which derived from the game Sheepshead and is related to Skat.

Modern French-style

The 78-card Tarot deck, and subsets of it, are used for a variety of European trick-taking games. The Tarot is distinguished from most other decks by the use of a separate trump suit of 21 cards, and one Fool, whose role varies according to the specific game. Additionally, it differs from the 52-card deck in the use of one additional court card in each suit, the Cavalier or Knight. In Europe, the deck is known primarily as a playing card deck; in the Americas, the deck is primarily known for its use in cartomancy; the trumps and fool comprising the Major Arcana while the 56 suited cards make up the Minor Arcana.

The origins of the tarot deck are thought to be Italian, with the oldest surviving examples dating from the mid 1400s in Milan, and using the traditional Latin suits of Swords, Cups, Coins and Staves (representing the four main classes of feudal society; military, clergy, mercantile trade, and agriculture). It is generally thought that the tarot was invented between 1411 and 1425 by adding trump cards to a deck format that was already popular in Italy as of this period, having been introduced from North Africa in the mid 1300's. The deck spread from Italy to Germanic countries, where the Latin suits evolved into the suits of Leaves (or Shields), Hearts (or Roses), Bells, and Acorns, and a combination of Latin and Germanic suit pictures and names resulted in the internationally-recognized French suits of Spades, Hearts, Diamonds and Clubs. It was a simplification of this French-suited tarot deck by removing the trumps that resulted in the English deck, popularized by British colonization and the gentleman's game Brag. The English deck would eventually become the internationally-recognized 52-card deck.

The trumps originally represented characters and ideals of increasing power, from the Magician and High Priestess of the 1 and 2 of trumps to the Sun, Judgement and the World at the high end. Allegorical meanings for each card existed as of the earliest days of the deck, but it wasn't until the late 1700s's that the works of Antoine Court de Gebelin made decks based on the Tarot de Marseille popular for divinatory purposes.

Central European

From this point, the evolution of decks for cartomancy and for gaming diverged; the "reading tarots" based on the symbolic designs of the Tarot de Marseille (which were modified slightly to produce the widely-known Rider-Waite deck) kept the older style of full-length character art, specific character meanings for the 21 trumps, and the use of the Latin suits (although most of the reading tarots in use today derive from the French Tarot de Marseille). On the other hand, "playing tarots", especially those of France and the Germanic regions, had by the end of the 1800s evolved into a form more resembling the modern playing card deck, with corner indices and easily-identifiable number and court cards. The use of the traditional characters cards for the trumps was largely discarded in favor of more whimsical scenes. The Tarot Nouveau is an example of the current style of playing tarot, though the artwork and design of this deck can be traced back to the 1890s. The Italian and Spanish Tarocchi decks, however, have largely kept the traditional character identifications of each trump, as well as the Latin suits, though these decks are used almost exclusively for gaming. Tarocco Bolognese and Tarocco Piedmontese are examples of Italian-suited playing tarot decks.

German suits may have different appearances. Many Eastern and Southern Germans prefer decks with Hearts, Bells, Leaves, and Acorns (for Hearts, Diamonds, Spades, and Clubs), as mentioned above. In the game Skat, East German players used the German deck, while players in Western Germany mainly used the French deck. After the reunification a compromise deck was created for official Skat tournaments, with French symbols but German colors (green Spades and yellow Diamonds).

The cards of Hungary, Austria, Slovenia, the Czech Republic, Croatia, Slovakia, Western Romania, Transcarpathia in Ukraine, Vojvodina in Serbia and South Tyrol use the same colors (Hearts, Bells, Leaves and Acorns) as the cards of Southern and Eastern Germany. They usually have a deck of 32 or 36 cards. The numbering includes VII, VIII, IX, X, Under, Over, King and Ace. Some variations with 36 cards have also the number VI. The VI in bells also has the function like a joker in some games and it's named Welli or Weli.

Special picture

These cards are illustrated with a special picture series that was born in the times before the 1848-49 revolutions in Hungary, when revolutionary movements were awakening all over in Europe. The Aces show the four seasons: the Ace of Hearts is Spring, the Ace of Bells is Summer, the Ace of Leaves is Autumn and the Ace of Acorns is Winter. The characters of the Under and Over cards were taken from the drama William Tell, the legendary Swiss freedom fighter, written by Friedrich Schiller in 1804, which was shown at Kolozsvár in 1827. It was long believed that the card was invented in Vienna at the Card Painting Workshop of Ferdinand Piatnik, however in 1974 the very first deck was found in an English private collection, and it has shown the name of the inventor and creator of deck as József Schneider, a Master Card Painter at Pest, and the date of its creation as 1837. Had he not chosen the Swiss characters of Schiller's play, had he chosen Hungarian heroes or freedom fighters, his deck of cards would never have made it into distribution, due to the heavy censorship of the government at the time. Interestingly, although the characters on the cards are Swiss, these cards are unknown in Switzerland.

Games that are played with this deck in Hungary include Skat, Ulti, Snapszer (or 66), Zsír (or Víg a hetes), Fire, Preferansz, Makaó, Lórum, Piros pacsi and Piros papucs. This set of cards is also used very often in the game of Preferans. In Croatia and Slovenia these cards are also commonly used for a game called Belot (also popular in Bulgaria and Armenia). Explanations of these games can be found at The Card Games Website.

The most common game played in Western Rumania (Transylvania and Banat) is Cruce, a variation of Snapszer, most commonly played in 2 pairs, with team members facing each other, hence the name (Cruce = Romanian for Cross).

In Switzerland, the national game is Jass. It is played with decks of 36 cards. West of the Brünig-Napf-Reuss line, a French-style 36-card deck is used, with numbers from 6 to 10, Jacks, Queens, Kings and Aces. The same kind of deck is used in Graubünden and in parts of Thurgau. In Central Switzerland, Zürich, Schaffhausen and Eastern Switzerland, the prevalent deck consists of 36 playing cards with the following suits: Roses, Bells, Acorns and Shields (in German: Rosen, Schellen, Eichel und Schilten). The ranks of the alternate deck, from low to high, are: 6, 7, 8, 9, Banner (10), "Under", "Over", King and Ace.

Further images

Italian playing cards most commonly consist of a deck of 40 cards (4 suits going 1 to 7 plus 3 face cards), and are used for playing Italian regional games such as Scopa or Briscola. 52 (or more rarely 36) card sets are also found in the north. Since these cards first appeared in the late 14th century when each region in Italy was a separately ruled province, there is no official Italian pattern. There are sixteen official regional patterns in use in different parts of the country (about one per region). These sixteen patterns are split amongst four regions:

* Northern Italian Suits - Triestine, Trevigiane, Trentine, Primiera Bolognese, Bergamasche, Bresciane
* Spanish-like Suits - Napoletane, Sarde, Romagnole, Siciliane, Piacentine.
* French Suits - Genovesi, Lombarde or Milanesi, Toscane, Piemontesi.
* German Suits - Salisburghesi used in Alto Adige/Südtirol

The suits are coins (sometimes suns or sunbursts) (Denari in Italian), swords (Spade), cups (Coppe) and clubs (sometimes batons Bastoni), and each suit contains an ace (or one), numbers two through seven, and three face cards. The face cards are:

* Re (king), the highest valued - a man standing, wearing a crown
* Cavallo (lit. horse) [italo-Spanish suits] - a man sitting on a horse / or Donna (lit. woman from Latin domina = mistress) [french suits] - a standing woman with a crown
* Fante (lit. infantry soldier) - a younger figure standing, without a crown

The Spanish-like-suit knave (fante - the lowest face card) is depicted as a woman, and is sometimes referred to as donna like the next higher face card of the French-suit deck; this, when coupled with the French usage, which puts a queen, also called donna (woman) in Italian and not regina (queen), as the mid-valued face card, can very occasionally lead to a swap of the value of the French-suit donna (or more rarely of the international-card Queen) and the knave (or jack).

Unlike Anglo-American cards, some Italian cards do not have any numbers (or letters) identifying their value. The cards' value is determined by identifying the face card or counting the number of suit characters.

Spanish

The four aces present in the baraja, from the deck made by Heraclio Fournier. Left to right, top to bottom: oros, copas, espadas, and bastos. The traditional Spanish deck (referred to as baraja española in Spanish) uses Latin suit symbols. Being a Latin-suited deck (like the Italian deck), it is organized into four palos (suits) that closely match those of the Italian-suited Tarot deck: oros ("golds" or coins), copas (beakers or cups), espadas (swords) and bastos (batons or clubs). Certain decks include two "comodines" (jokers) as well.

The cards (cartas in Spanish) are all numbered, but unlike in the standard Anglo-French deck, the card numbered 10 is the first of the court cards (instead of a card depicting ten coins/cups/swords/batons); so each suit has only twelve cards. The three court or face cards in each suit are as follows: la sota ("the knave" or jack, numbered 10 and equivalent to the Anglo-French card J), el caballo ("the horse", horseman, knight or cavalier, numbered 11 and used instead of the Anglo-French card Q; note the Tarot decks have both a queen and a knight of each suit, while the Anglo-French deck uses the former, and the Spanish deck uses the latter), and finally el rey ("the king", numbered 12 and equivalent to the Anglo-French card K). However, most Spanish games involve forty-card decks, with the 8s and 9s removed, similar to the standard Italian deck.

The box that goes around the figure has a mark to distinguish the suit without showing all of your cards: The cups have one interruption, the swords two, the clubs three, and the gold none. This mark is called "la pinta" and gave rise to the expression: "le conocí por la pinta" (I knew him by his markings).

East Asia

The Baraja have been widely considered to be part of the occult in many Latin-American countries, yet they continue to be used widely for card games and gambling, especially in Spain, which does not use the Anglo-French deck. Among other places, the Baraja have appeared in One Hundred Years of Solitude and other Hispanic and Latin American literature. The Spanish deck is used not only in Spain, but also in other countries where Spain maintained an influence (e.g., Mexico, Argentina and most of Hispanic America, the Philippines and Puerto Rico) 1. Among the games played with this deck are: el mus (a very popular and highly regarded vying game of Basque origin), la brisca, la pocha, el tute (with many variations), el guiñote, la escoba del quince (a trick-taking game), el julepe, el cinquillo, las siete y media, la mona, el truc (or truco), el cuajo (a matching game from the Philippines), el jamón, el tonto, el hijoputa, el mentiroso, el cuco and las parejas.

The standard 52-card deck is commonly known as a "poker" deck in Taiwan, Japan, China, and South Korea. Alternatively, a more common name in Japan for the same deck is trump which comes from the term trump card. These cards are most often used for baccarat and blackjack in casinos, or deciding the order of play or challenge in games of billiards. Poker itself and other western games are relatively unknown. Home and online card games in east Asia such as Koi-Koi and Go-Stop use a Karuta, such as hanafuda, uta-garuta or kabufuda deck in Japan, and the equivalent hwatu deck in Korea.

Accessible playing cards

Playing cards have been adapted for use by the visually impaired by the inclusion of large-print and/or braille characters as part of the card. Both standard card decks and decks for specific games such as UNO are commonly adapted. Large-print cards are also commonly used by the elderly. In addition to increasing the size of the suit symbol and the denomination text, large-print cards commonly reduce the visual complexity of the images for simpler identification. They may also omit the patterns of pips in favor of one large pip to identify suit. Oversize cards are sometimes used but are uncommon. These can assist with ease of handling and to allow for larger text.

No universal standards for braille playing cards exist. There are many national and producer variations. In most cases each card is marked with two braille characters in the same location as the normal corner markings. The two characters can appear in either vertical (one character below another) or horizontal (two characters side by side). In either case one character identifies the card suit and the other the card denomination. 1 for ace, 2 through 9 for the numbered cards, X or the letter O for ten, J for jack, Q for queen, K for king. The suits are variously marked using D for diamond, S for spade, C or X for club and H or K for heart.

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Site Map

• Early design changes
• Black Lady
• Card games
• Additional design
• Modern French-style
• Central European
• Special picture
• Further images
• Spanish
• East Asia
• Accessible playing cards
• Contact Us
• Site Map