A playing card is a piece of specially prepared card stock, heavy paper, thin cardboard, plastic-coated paper, cotton-paper blend, or thin plastic that is marked with distinguishing motifs. Often the front (face) and back of each card has a finish to make handling easier. They are most commonly used for playing card games, and are also used in magic tricks, cardistry, card throwing, and card houses; cards may also be collected. Playing cards are typically palm-sized for convenient handling, and usually are sold together in a set as a deck of cards or pack of cards.
A stripped deck or short deck (US), short pack or shortened pack (UK), is a set of playing cards reduced in size from a full pack or deck by the removal of a certain card or cards. The removed cards are usually pip cards, but can also be court cards or Tarot cards. Many card games use stripped decks, and stripped decks for popular games are commercially available.
Tarot is a pack of playing cards, used from at least the mid-15th century in various parts of Europe to play card games such as Tarocchini. From their Italian roots, tarot-playing cards spread to most of Europe, evolving into a family of games that includes German Grosstarok and modern games such as French Tarot and Austrian Königrufen. In the late 18th century French occultists made elaborate, but unsubstantiated, claims about their history and meaning, leading to the emergence of custom decks for use in divination via tarot card reading and cartomancy. Thus, there are two distinct types of tarot packs in circulation: those used for card games and those used for divination. However, some older patterns, such as the Tarot de Marseille, originally intended for playing card games, are occasionally used for cartomancy.
Karuta are Japanese playing cards. Playing cards were introduced to Japan by Portuguese traders during the mid-16th century. These early decks were used for trick-taking games. The earliest indigenous karuta was invented in the town of Miike in Chikugo Province at around the end of the 16th century. The Miike karuta Memorial Hall located in Ōmuta, Fukuoka, is the only municipal museum in Japan dedicated specifically to the history of karuta.
In playing cards, a suit is one of the categories into which the cards of a deck are divided. Most often, each card bears one of several pips (symbols) showing to which suit it belongs; the suit may alternatively or additionally be indicated by the color printed on the card. The rank for each card is determined by the number of pips on it, except on face cards. Ranking indicates which cards within a suit are better, higher or more valuable than others, whereas there is no order between the suits unless defined in the rules of a specific card game. In most decks, there is exactly one card of any given rank in any given suit. A deck may include special cards that belong to no suit, often called jokers.
Clubs is one of the four playing card suits in the standard French-suited playing cards. The symbol was derived from that of the suit of Acorns in a German deck when French suits were invented in around 1480.
In a deck of playing cards, the term face card (US) or court card, and sometimes royalty, is generally used to describe a card that depicts a person as opposed to the pip cards. In a standard 52-card pack of the English pattern, these cards are the King, Queen and Jack. The term picture card is also common, but that term sometimes includes the Aces.
The standard 52-card deck of French-suited playing cards is the most common pack of playing cards used today. The main feature of most playing card decks that empower their use in diverse games and other activities is their double-sided design, where one side, usually bearing a colourful or complex pattern, is exactly identical on all playing cards, thus ensuring the anonymity and fungibility of the cards when their value is to be kept secret, and a second side, that, when apparent, is unique to every individual card in a deck, usually bearing a suit as well as a alphanumerical value, which may be used to distinguish the card in game mechanics. In English-speaking countries it is the only traditional pack used for playing cards; in many countries of the world, however, it is used alongside other traditional, often older, standard packs with different suit systems such as those with German-, Italian-, Spanish- or Swiss suits. The most common pattern of French-suited cards worldwide and the only one commonly available in English-speaking countries is the English pattern pack. The second most common is the Belgian-Genoese pattern, designed in France, but whose use spread to Spain, Italy, the Ottoman Empire, the Balkans and much of North Africa and the Middle East. In addition to those, there are other major international and regional patterns including standard 52-card packs, for example, in Italy that use Italian-suited cards. In other regions, such as Spain and Switzerland, the traditional standard pack comprises 36, 40 or 48 cards.
Spanish-suited playing cards or Spanish-suited cards have four suits, and a deck is usually made up of 40 or 48 cards. It is categorized as a Latin-suited deck and has strong similarities with the Portuguese-suited deck, Italian-suited deck and some to the French deck. Spanish-suited cards are used in Spain, Southern Italy, parts of France, Hispanic America, North Africa, and the Philippines.
Playing cards have been in Italy since the late 14th century. Until the mid 19th century, Italy was composed of many smaller independent states which led to the development of various regional patterns of playing cards; "Italian suited cards" normally only refer to cards originating from northeastern Italy around the former Republic of Venice, which are largely confined to northern Italy, parts of Switzerland, Dalmatia and southern Montenegro. Other parts of Italy traditionally use traditional local variants of Spanish suits, French suits or German suits.
Spades is one of the four playing card suits in the standard French-suited playing cards. It has the same shape as the leaf symbol in German-suited playing cards but its appearance is more akin to that of an upside down black heart with a stalk at its base. It symbolises the pike or halberd, two medieval weapons, but is actually an adaptation of the German suit symbol of Leaves created when French suits were invented around 1480.
A knight or cavalier is a playing card with a picture of a man riding a horse on it. It is a standard face or court card in Italian and Spanish packs where it is usually referred to as the 'knight' in English, the caballo in Spanish or the cavallo in Italian. It ranks between the knave and the king within its suit; therefore, it replaces the queen, nonexistent in these packs.
The Tarocco Piemontese is a type of tarot deck of Italian origin. It is the most common tarot playing set in northern Italy, much more common than the Tarocco Bolognese. The most popular Piedmontese tarot games are Scarto, Mitigati, Chiamare il Re, and Partita which are played in Pinerolo and Turin. This deck is considered part of Piedmontese culture and appeared in the 2006 Winter Olympics closing ceremony held in Turin. As this was the standard tarot pack of the Kingdom of Sardinia, it was also formerly used in Savoy and Nice before their annexation by France. Additionally, it was used as an alternative to the Tarocco Siciliano in Calatafimi-Segesta, Sicily. Outside of Italy, it is used by a small number of players in Ticino, Switzerland and was used by Italian Argentines.
Batons or clubs is one of the four suits of playing cards in the standard Latin deck along with the suits of cups, coins and swords. 'Batons' is the name usually given to the suit in Italian-suited cards where the symbols look like batons. 'Clubs' refers to the suit in Spanish-suited cards where the symbols look more like wooden clubs.
French-suited playing cards or French-suited cards are cards that use the French suits of trèfles, carreaux, cœurs, and piques. Each suit contains three or four face/court cards. In a standard 52-card deck these are the valet, the dame, and the roi (king). In addition, in Tarot packs, there is a cavalier (cavalier) ranking between the queen and the jack. Aside from these aspects, decks can include a wide variety of regional and national patterns, which often have different deck sizes. In comparison to Spanish, Italian, German, and Swiss playing cards, French cards are the most widespread due to the geopolitical, commercial, and cultural influence of France, the United Kingdom, and the United States in the 19th and 20th centuries. Other reasons for their popularity were the simplicity of the suit insignia, which simplifies mass production, and the popularity of whist and contract bridge. The English pattern of French-suited cards is so widespread that it is also known as the International or Anglo-American pattern.
Triomphe, once known as French ruff, is a card game dating from the late 15th century. It most likely originated in France or Spain and later spread to the rest of Europe. When the game arrived in Italy, it shared a similar name with the pre-existing game and deck known as trionfi; probably resulting in the latter becoming renamed as Tarocchi (tarot). While trionfi has a fifth suit that acts as permanent trumps, triomphe randomly selects one of the existing four suits as trumps. Another common feature of this game is the robbing of the stock. Triomphe became so popular that during the 16th century the earlier game of trionfi was gradually renamed tarocchi, tarot, or tarock. This game is the origin of the English word "trump" and is the ancestor of many trick-taking games like Euchre and Whist. The earliest known description of Triomphe was of a point-trick game, perhaps one of the earliest of its type; later, the name was applied to a plain-trick game.
The suit of swords is one of the four card suits used in Latin-suited playing cards alongside coins, cups and batons. These suits are used in Spanish, Italian and some tarot card packs.
The suit of coins is one of the four card suits used in Latin-suited playing cards alongside swords, cups and batons. These suits are used in Spanish, Italian and some tarot card packs. This suit has maintained its original identity from Chinese money-suited cards. Symbol on Italian pattern cards: Symbol on Spanish pattern cards: Symbol on French aluette cards:
Portuguese-suited playing cards or Portuguese-suited cards are a nearly extinct suit-system of playing cards that survive in a few towns in Sicily and Japan. Although not of Portuguese origin, they were named after the country because Portugal was the last European nation to use them on a large basis. They are very similar to Spanish-suited playing cards in that they use the Latin-suit system of cups, swords, coins and clubs. However, this system featured straight swords and knobbly clubs like the Spanish suits but intersected them like the northern Italian suits. The Aces featured dragons and the knaves were all distinctly female. The arrangement of the cups and coins are also slightly different:
Symbol on Spanish pattern cards: 
Symbol on French Aluette Spanish pattern cards: 
