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 a single deck, 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.
While English-speaking countries traditionally use cards with the French suits of Clubs, Spades, Hearts and Diamonds, many other countries have their own traditional suits. Much of central Europe uses German suited cards with suits of Acorns, Leaves, Hearts and Bells; Spain and parts of Italy and South America use Spanish suited cards with their suits of Swords, Batons, Cups and Coins; German Switzerland uses Swiss suited cards with Acorns, Shields, yellow Roses and Bells; and many parts of Italy use Italian suited cards which have the same suits but different patterns compared with Spanish suited cards. Asian countries such as China and Japan also have their own traditional suits. Tarot card packs have a set of distinct picture cards alongside the traditional four suits.
Modern Western playing cards are generally divided into two or three general suit-systems. The older Latin suits are subdivided into the Italian and Spanish suit-systems. The younger Germanic suits are subdivided into the German and Swiss suit-systems. The French suits are a derivative of the German suits but are generally considered a separate system. [1] [2]
Italian [lower-alpha 1] | Cups (Coppe) | Coins (Denari) | Clubs (Bastoni) | Swords (Spade) |
Spanish [lower-alpha 2] | Cups (Copas) | Coins (Oros) | Clubs (Bastos) | Swords (Espadas) |
The earliest card games were trick-taking games and the invention of suits increased the level of strategy and depth in these games. A card of one suit cannot beat a card from another regardless of its rank. The concept of suits predate playing cards and can be found in Chinese dice and domino games such as Tien Gow.
Chinese money-suited cards are believed to be the oldest ancestor to the Latin suit-system. The money-suit system is based on denominations of currency: Coins , Strings of Coins, Myriads of Strings (or of coins), and Tens of Myriads. Old Chinese coins had holes in the middle to allow them to be strung together. A string of coins could easily be misinterpreted as a stick to those unfamiliar with them.
By then the Islamic world had spread into Central Asia and had contacted China, and had adopted playing cards. The Muslims renamed the suit of myriads as cups; this may have been due to seeing a Chinese character for "myriad" ( 万 ) upside-down. The Chinese numeral character for Ten ( 十 ) on the Tens of Myriads suit may have inspired the Muslim suit of swords. [3] Another clue linking these Chinese, Muslim, and European cards are the ranking of certain suits. In many early Chinese games like Madiao, the suit of coins was in reverse order so that the lower ones beat the higher ones. In the Indo-Persian game of Ganjifa, half the suits were also inverted, including a suit of coins. This was also true for the European games of Tarot and Ombre. The inverting of suits had no purpose in terms of play but was an artifact from the earliest games.
These Turko-Arabic cards, called Kanjifa, used the suits coins, clubs, cups, and swords, but the clubs represented polo sticks; Europeans changed that suit, as polo was an obscure sport to them.
The Latin suits are coins, clubs, cups, and swords. They are the earliest suit-system in Europe, and were adopted from the cards imported from Mamluk Egypt and Moorish Granada in the 1370s.
There are four types of Latin suits: Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, [lower-alpha 3] and an extinct archaic type. [4] [5] The systems can be distinguished by the pips of their long suits: swords and clubs.
Despite a long history of trade with China, Japan was not introduced to playing cards until the arrival of the Portuguese in the 1540s. [lower-alpha 5] Early locally made cards, Karuta, were very similar to Portuguese decks. Increasing restrictions by the Tokugawa shogunate on gambling, card playing, and general foreign influence, resulted in the Hanafuda card deck that today is used most often for fishing-type games. The role of rank and suit in organizing cards became switched, so the hanafuda deck has 12 suits, each representing a month of the year, and each suit has 4 cards, most often two normal, one Ribbon and one Special (though August, November and December each differ uniquely from this convention).
Swiss-German [lower-alpha 7] | Roses [lower-alpha 8] | Bells [lower-alpha 9] | Acorns [lower-alpha 10] | Shields [lower-alpha 11] |
German | Hearts [lower-alpha 12] | Bells [lower-alpha 13] | Acorns [lower-alpha 14] | Leaves [lower-alpha 15] |
French | Hearts | Diamonds | Clubs [lower-alpha 16] | Spades [lower-alpha 17] |
During the 15th-century, manufacturers in German speaking lands experimented with various new suit systems to replace the Latin suits. One early deck had five suits, the Latin ones with an extra suit of shields. [10] The Swiss-Germans developed their own suits of shields, roses, acorns, and bells around 1450. [11] Instead of roses and shields, the Germans settled with hearts and leaves around 1460. The French derived their suits of trèfles (clovers or clubs ♣), carreaux (tiles or diamonds ♦), cœurs (hearts ♥), and piques (pikes or spades ♠) from the German suits around 1480. French suits correspond closely with German suits with the exception of the tiles with the bells but there is one early French deck that had crescents instead of tiles. The English names for the French suits of clubs and spades may simply have been carried over from the older Latin suits. [12]
Beginning around 1440 in northern Italy, some decks started to include an extra suit of (usually) 21 numbered cards known as trionfi or trumps, to play tarot card games. [13] Always included in tarot decks is one card, the Fool or Excuse, which may be part of the trump suit depending on the game or region. These cards do not have pips or face cards like the other suits. Most tarot decks used for games come with French suits but Italian suits are still used in Piedmont, Bologna, and pockets of Switzerland. A few Sicilian towns use the Portuguese-suited Tarocco Siciliano, the only deck of its kind left in Europe.
The esoteric use of Tarot packs emerged in France in the late 18th century, since when special packs intended for divination have been produced. These typically have the suits cups, pentacles (based on the suit of coins), wands (based on the suit of batons), and swords. The trump cards and Fool of traditional card playing packs were named the Major Arcana; the remaining cards, often embellished with occult images, were the Minor Arcana. Neither term is recognised by card players. [14] [15]
In a large and popular category of trick-taking games, one suit may be designated in each deal to be trump and all cards of the trump suit rank above all non-trump cards, and automatically prevail over them, losing only to a higher trump if one is played to the same trick. [16] Non-trump suits are called plain suits. [17]
Some games treat one or more suits as being special or different from the others. A simple example is Spades, which uses spades as a permanent trump suit. A less simple example is Hearts, which is a kind of point trick game in which the object is to avoid taking tricks containing hearts. With typical rules for Hearts (rules vary slightly) the queen of spades and the two of clubs (sometimes also the jack of diamonds) have special effects, with the result that all four suits have different strategic value. Tarot decks have a dedicated trump suit.
Games of the Karnöffel Group have between one and four chosen suits, sometimes called selected suits or, misleadingly, trump suits. The chosen suits are typified by having a disrupted ranking and cards with varying privileges which may range from full to none and which may depend on the order they are played to the trick. For example, chosen Sevens may be unbeatable when led, but otherwise worthless. In Swedish Bräus some cards are even unplayable. In games where the number of chosen suits is less than four, the others are called unchosen suits and usually rank in their natural order.
Whist-style rules generally preclude the necessity of determining which of two cards of different suits has higher rank, because a card played on a card of a different suit either automatically wins or automatically loses depending on whether the new card is a trump. However, some card games also need to define relative suit rank. An example of this is in auction games such as bridge, where if one player wishes to bid to make some number of heart tricks and another to make the same number of diamond tricks, there must be a mechanism to determine which takes precedence in the bidding order.
There is no standard order for the four suits and so there are differing conventions among games that need a suit hierarchy. Examples of suit order are (from highest to lowest):
High → low | Games | Mnemonic | |||
---|---|---|---|---|---|
♠ | ♥ | ♦ | ♣ | Bridge for bidding and scoring Poker occasionally | Alphabetical order reversed: S, H, D, C |
♠ | ♥ | ♣ | ♦ | Big Two | 1 tip, 2 halves, 3 leaves, 4 corners |
♥ | ♦ | ♣ | ♠ | Preferans only used for bidding Five Hundred for bidding and scoring Thirteen | |
♥ | ♦ | ♠ | ♣ | Préférence only used for bidding | |
♣ | ♠ | ♥ | ♦ | Skat for bidding (valued 12, 11, 10, 9) and to determine which Jack beats which in play Other European games such as Bruus | |
♣ | ♠ | ♥ | ♦ | Cego for determining highest card in certain situations | |
♣ | ♥ | ♠ | ♦ | Ninety-nine for scoring | 3, 2, 1, 0 lobes |
The pairing of suits is a vestigial remnant of Ganjifa, a game where half the suits were in reverse order, the lower cards beating the higher. In Ganjifa, progressive suits were called "strong" while inverted suits were called "weak". In Latin decks, the traditional division is between the long suits of swords and clubs and the round suits of cups and coins. This pairing can be seen in Ombre and Tarot card games. German and Swiss suits lack pairing but French suits maintained them and this can be seen in the game of Spoil Five. [18]
In some games, such as blackjack, suits are ignored. In other games, such as Canasta, only the color (red or black) is relevant. In yet others, such as bridge, each of the suit pairings are distinguished.
In contract bridge, there are three ways to divide four suits into pairs: by color, by rank and by shape resulting in six possible suit combinations.
Some decks, while using the French suits, give each suit a different color to make the suits more distinct from each other. In bridge, such decks are known as no-revoke decks, and the most common colors are black spades, red hearts, blue diamonds and green clubs, although in the past the diamond suit usually appeared in a golden yellow-orange. A pack occasionally used in Germany uses green spades (comparable to leaves), red hearts, yellow diamonds (comparable to bells) and black clubs (comparable to acorns). This is a compromise deck devised to allow players from East Germany (who used German suits) and West Germany (who adopted the French suits) to be comfortable with the same deck when playing tournament Skat after the German reunification. [19]
A large number of games are based around a deck in which each card has a rank and a suit (usually represented by a color), and for each suit there is exactly one card having each rank, though in many cases the deck has various special cards as well.
Games | Suits | blue | red | green | yellow | purple | orange / brown | black / white |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Skip-Bo | 3 | |||||||
DUO | 4 | |||||||
UNO, Phase 10 | 4 | |||||||
Rook | 4 | |||||||
Sticheln | 5 | |||||||
Mü | 5 | |||||||
Rage, Level 8 | 6 | |||||||
Schotten Totten | 6 |
Decks for some games are divided into suits, but otherwise bear little relation to traditional games. An example would be the board game Taj Mahal, in which each card has one of four background colors, the rule being that all the cards played by a single player in a single round must be the same color. The selection of cards in the deck of each color is approximately the same and the player's choice of which color to use is guided by the contents of their particular hand.
In the trick-taking card game Flaschenteufel ("The Bottle Imp"), all cards are part of a single sequence ranked from 1 to 37 but split into three suits depending on its rank. players must follow the suit led, but if they are void in that suit they may play a card of another suit and this can still win the trick if its rank is high enough. For this reason every card in the deck has a different number to prevent ties. A further strategic element is introduced since one suit contains mostly low-ranking cards and another, mostly high-ranking cards.
Whereas cards in a traditional deck have two classifications—suit and rank—and each combination is represented by one card, giving for example 4 suits × 13 ranks = 52 cards, each card in a Set deck has four classifications each into one of three categories, giving a total of 3 × 3 × 3 × 3 = 81 cards. Any one of these four classifications could be considered a suit, but this is not really enlightening in terms of the structure of the game.
Card suit symbols occur in places outside card playing:
In computer and other digital media, suit symbols can be represented with character encoding, notably in the ISO and Unicode standards, or with Web standard (SGML's named entity syntax):
UTF code: | U+2660 (9824dec) | U+2665 (9829dec) | U+2666 (9830dec) | U+2663 (9827dec) |
---|---|---|---|---|
Symbol: | ♠ | ♥ | ♦ | ♣ |
Name: | Black Spade Suit | Red Heart Suit | Red Diamond Suit | Black Club Suit |
Entity: | ♠ | ♥ | ♦ | ♣ |
UTF code: | U+2664 (9828dec) | U+2661 (9825dec) | U+2662 (9826dec) | U+2667 (9831dec) |
Symbol: | ♤ | ♡ | ♢ | ♧ |
Name: | White Spade Suit | White Heart Suit | White Diamond Suit | White Club Suit |
UTF codes are expressed by the Unicode code point "U+hexadecimal number" syntax, and as subscript the respective decimal number. Symbols are expressed here as they are in the web browser's HTML renderization. Name is the formal name adopted in the standard specifications. |
Unicode is the most frequently used encoding standard, and suits are in the Miscellaneous Symbols Block (2600–26FF) of the Unicode.
In some card games the card suits have a dominance order, for example: club (lowest) - diamond - heart - spade (highest). That led to in spades being used to mean more than expected, in abundance, very much. [21]
Other expressions drawn from bridge and similar games include strong suit (any area of personal strength) and to follow suit (to imitate another's actions).
Contract bridge, or simply bridge, is a trick-taking card game using a standard 52-card deck. In its basic format, it is played by four players in two competing partnerships, with partners sitting opposite each other around a table. Millions of people play bridge worldwide in clubs, tournaments, online and with friends at home, making it one of the world's most popular card games, particularly among seniors. The World Bridge Federation (WBF) is the governing body for international competitive bridge, with numerous other bodies governing it at the regional level.
A wild card in card games is one that may be used to represent any other playing card, sometimes with certain restrictions. Jokers are often used as wild cards, but other cards may be designated as wild by the rules or by agreement. In addition to their use in card games played with a standard pack, wild cards may also exist in dedicated deck card games, such as the 'Master' card in Lexicon.
Stayman is a bidding convention in the card game contract bridge. It is used by a partnership to find a 4-4 or 5-3 trump fit in a major suit after making a one notrump (1NT) opening bid and it has been adapted for use after a 2NT opening, a 1NT overcall, and many other natural notrump bids.
A trick-taking game is a card or tile-based game in which play of a hand centers on a series of finite rounds or units of play, called tricks, which are each evaluated to determine a winner or taker of that trick. The object of such games then may be closely tied to the number of tricks taken, as in plain-trick games such as contract bridge, whist, and spades, or to the value of the cards contained in taken tricks, as in point-trick games such as pinochle, the tarot family, briscola, and most evasion games like hearts. Trick-and-draw games are trick-taking games in which the players can fill up their hands after each trick. In most variants, players are free to play any card into a trick in the first phase of the game, but must follow suit as soon as the stock is depleted. Trick-avoidance games like reversis or polignac are those in which the aim is to avoid taking some or all tricks.
500 or Five Hundred is a trick-taking game developed in the United States from Euchre. Euchre was extended to a 10 card game with bidding and a Misere contract similar to Russian Preference, producing a good cut-throat three player game like Preference and a four player game played in partnerships like Whist which is the most popular modern form, although with special packs it can be played by up to six players. It arose in America before 1900 and was promoted by the US Playing Card Company, who copyrighted and marketed a deck with a set of rules in 1904. The US Playing Card Company released the improved Avondale scoring table to remove bidding irregularities in 1906. 500 is a social card game and was highly popular in the United States until around 1920 when first auction bridge and then contract bridge drove it from favour. It continues to be popular in Ohio and Pennsylvania, where it has been taught through six generations community-wide, and in other countries: Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Shetland. Despite its American origin, 500 is the national card game of Australia.
Black Lady is an American card game of the Hearts group for three to six players and the most popular of the group. It emerged in the early 20th century as an elaboration of Hearts and was initially also called Discard Hearts. It is named after its highest penalty card, the Queen of Spades or "Black Lady". It is a trick-avoidance game in which the aim is to avoid taking tricks containing hearts or the Black Lady. American author and leading bridge exponent, Ely Culbertson, describes it as "essentially Hearts with the addition of the queen of spades as a minus card, counting thirteen" and goes on to say that "Black Lady and its elaborations have completely overshadowed the original Hearts in popularity."
The Minor Arcana, sometimes known as Lesser Arcana, are the suit cards in a cartomantic tarot deck.
Safety play in contract bridge is a generic name for plays in which declarer maximizes the chances for fulfilling the contract by ignoring a chance for a higher score. Declarer uses safety plays to cope with potentially unfavorable layouts of the opponent's cards. In so doing, declarer attempts to ensure the contract even in worst-case scenarios, by giving up the possibility of overtricks.
Skat, historically Scat, is a three-player trick-taking card game of the Ace-Ten family, devised around 1810 in Altenburg in the Duchy of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg. It is the national game of Germany and, along with Doppelkopf, it is the most popular card game in Germany and Silesia and one of the most popular in the rest of Poland. A variant of 19th-century Skat was once popular in the US. John McLeod considers it one of the best and most interesting card games for three players, and Kelbet described it as "the king of German card games."
The standard 52-card deck of French-suited playing cards is the most common pack of playing cards used today. 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.
High card by suit and low card by suit refer to assigning relative values to playing cards of equal rank based on their suit. When suit ranking is applied, the most common conventions from lowest to highest are:
Polish Club is a bridge bidding system which was developed in Poland, where it is the most popular bidding system, and which is also used by players of other countries. It is a type of small club system.
Tiến lên is a shedding-type card game originating in southern China and Vietnam. It may be considered Vietnam's national card game, and is also played in the United States, sometimes under the names "Viet Cong", "VC", "Thirteen", or "Killer".
Zar Points (ZP) is a statistically derived method for evaluating contract bridge hands developed by Zar Petkov. The statistical research Petkov conducted in the areas of hand evaluation and bidding is useful to bridge players, regardless of their bidding or hand evaluation system. The research showed that the Milton Work point count method, even when adjusted for distribution, is not sufficiently accurate in evaluating all hands. As a result, players often make incorrect or sub-optimal bids. Zar Points are designed to take many additional factors into consideration by assigning points to each factor based on statistical weight. While most of these factors are already implicitly taken into account by experienced players, Zar Points provides a quantitative method that allows them to be incorporated into bidding.
Two-ten-jack is a Japanese trick-taking card game for two players that takes its name from the three highest-scoring cards in the game: the 2, 10 and Jack in three different suits.
The Useful Space Principle, or USP, in the game of contract bridge was first articulated in a series of six articles in The Bridge World, published from November 1980 through April 1981. The USP is expressed succinctly in The Bridge World glossary as "a partnership's assigning meanings to actions so that the remaining bidding space matches the needs of the auction."
Konter a Matt, Kontra a Matt or Konter a Midd is a Luxembourgish trick-taking card game played by four players. The game is popular enough to have been televised on RTL, Luxembourg's leading TV station and for tournaments to be organised. Konter a Matt is one of a family of similar games, known as the Couillon Group, played in the Benelux area. Other games in the family include the Belgian game of Couillon, known as Kwajongen in Flemish areas and Kujong in Luxembourg, the Dutch game of Troeven, and the Belgian games of Brûte and Gamelle.
Gong Zhu (拱猪) is a Chinese four-player trick-taking card game that is similar to Black Lady, the leading member of the Hearts family. However, it differs in that it assigns quite different point values to cards. The objective of the game is to score positive points and avoid penalty points. Gong Zhu means: Chase the Pig, for "pig" is the name given to the Q♠.
Machiavelli is an Italian card game derived from Rummy and is usually played by 2 up to 5 players, but can be played by even a higher number. Because of its characteristics, it is not generally associated with gambling, but is instead a party game.
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the handling of fonts and symbols. Within it is a set of images depicting playing cards, and another depicting the French card suits.
In the system that is most commonly used, these suits are designated as Wands, Swords, Cups, and Pentacles.
The Minor Arcana comprises fifty-six cards divided into four suits, which in most decks are swords, wands, cups, and coins or pentacles.