Suit (cards)

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The four French playing cards suits used primarily in the English-speaking world: diamonds (), clubs (), hearts () and spades () 7 playing cards.jpg
The four French playing cards suits used primarily in the English-speaking world: diamonds (♦), clubs (♣), hearts (♥) and spades (♠)

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.

Playing card card used as one of a set for playing card games

A playing card is a piece of specially prepared heavy paper, thin cardboard, plastic-coated paper, cotton-paper blend, or thin plastic, marked with distinguishing motifs and used as one of a set for playing card games. Playing cards are typically palm-sized for convenient handling, and were first invented in China during the Tang dynasty.

Pips are small but easily countable items. The term is used to describe the dots on dominoes and dice, the symbols that denote suits and value of playing cards, as the name for the small seeds of some fruit, and sometimes as a synonym for "dot" in morse code.

Face card playing card depicting a person; e.g. the king, queen, and jack in the 52-card French deck; knave, knight, queen, and king in the tarot deck

In a deck of playing cards, the term face card (US) or court card (British) is generally used to describe a card that depicts a person as opposed to the pip cards. They are also known as picture cards, or until the early 20th century, coat cards.

Contents

History

Various languages have different terminology for suits such as colors, signs, or seeds. 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 on its own. [1] [2]

Italian playing cards card deck used in Italy

Playing cards have been in Italy since the late 14th century. As Latin suited cards, they use swords (spade), cups (coppe), coins (denari), and clubs (bastoni). All Italian suited decks have three face cards per suit: the fante (Knave), cavallo (Knight), and re (King), unless it is a tarocchi deck in which case a donna or regina (Queen) is inserted between the cavallo and re. Italian suited cards normally only refer to cards originating from northeastern Italy around the former Republic of Venice as the rest of Italy uses Spanish suits, French suits or German suits. Until the late 19th century, Italy was composed of many smaller independent states or under foreign occupation which led to the development of various regional patterns. Italian suited cards are largely confined to northern Italy, parts of Switzerland, Dalmatia and southern Montenegro. Popular games include Scopa, Briscola, Tressette, Bestia, and Sette e mezzo.

Spanish playing cards card deck used in Spain

Cartas or naipes ("cards"), also known as Baraja española, are the playing cards associated with Spain. They have four suits and a deck is usually made up of 40 or 48 cards.

German playing cards card deck used in Germany

German playing cards are a style of playing cards used in many parts of Central Europe. Playing cards (Spielkarten) entered German-speaking lands around the late 1370s. The earliest cards were likely Latin-suited like in Italy and Spain. After much experimentation, the cards settled into new suits of Acorns (Eichel), Leaves, Hearts (Herz) and Bells around 1450. Closely related Swiss playing cards are used in German-speaking Switzerland. The French suit symbols were derived from the German ones around 1480. German-suited cards spread throughout Central Europe into areas that were once under German or Austrian control. They were also produced and used as far east as Russia until the early 20th century. German-suited decks are not well known all over these countries including parts of Germany itself as they have been undergoing strong competition from French playing cards since the late 17th-century. Traditional card games in which the German suits are used include Skat, Schafkopf, Doppelkopf and Watten.

Origin and development of the Latin suits

Latin suits
Italian [lower-alpha 1] Cups
(Coppe)
Seme coppe carte trevisane.svg
Coins
(Denari)
Seme denari carte trevisane.svg
Clubs
(Bastoni)
Seme bastoni carte trevisane.svg
Swords
(Spade)
Seme spade carte trevisane.svg
Spanish [lower-alpha 2] Cups
(Copas)
Seme coppe carte spagnole.svg
Coins
(Oros)
Seme denari carte spagnole.svg
Clubs
(Bastos)
Seme bastoni carte spagnole.svg
Swords
(Espadas)
Seme spade carte spagnole.svg

The card suits originated in China, where playing cards were first invented. 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.

Card game game using playing cards as the primary device

A card game is any game using playing cards as the primary device with which the game is played, be they traditional or game-specific. Countless card games exist, including families of related games. A small number of card games played with traditional decks have formally standardized rules, but most are folk games whose rules vary by region, culture, and person. Games using playing cards exploit the fact that cards are individually identifiable from one side only, so that each player knows only the cards he holds and not those held by anyone else. For this reason card games are often characterized as games of chance or “imperfect information”—as distinct from games of strategy or “perfect information,” where the current position is fully visible to all players throughout the game.

Trick-taking game type of card game

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 Whist, Contract bridge, Spades, Napoleon, Euchre, Rowboat, Clubs and Spoil Five, or to the value of the cards contained in taken tricks, as in point-trick games such as Pinochle, the Tarot family, Mariage, Rook, All Fours, Manille, Briscola, and most evasion games like Hearts. The domino game Texas 42 is an example of a trick-taking game that is not a card game. 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 is avoid taking some or all tricks.

Tien Gow or Tin Kau is the name of Chinese gambling games played with either a pair of dice or a set of 32 Chinese dominoes. In these games, Heaven is the top rank of the civil suit, while Nine is the top rank of the military suit. The civil suit was originally called the Chinese (華) suit while the military was called the Barbarian (夷) suit but this was changed during the Qing dynasty to avoid offending the ruling Manchus. The highly idiosyncratic and culture-specific suit-system of these games are likely the conceptual origin of suits found in playing cards. Play is counter-clockwise.

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.

Denomination (currency) proper description of a currency amount, usually for coins or banknotes

Denomination is a proper description of a currency amount, usually for coins or banknotes. Denominations may also be used with other means of payment like gift cards. For example, five euros is the denomination of a five euro note.

Cash (Chinese coin) Chinese coin

Cash was a type of coin of China and East Asia, used from the 4th century BC until the 20th century AD, characterised by their round outer shape and a square center hole. Originally cast during the Warring States period, these coins continued to be used for the entirety of Imperial China as well as under Mongol, and Manchu rule. The last Chinese cash coins were cast in the first year of the Republic of China. Generally most cash coins were made from copper or bronze alloys, with iron, lead, and zinc coins occasionally used less often throughout Chinese history. Rare silver and gold cash coins were also produced. During most of their production, cash coins were cast, but during the late Qing dynasty, machine-struck cash coins began to be made. As the cash coins produced over Chinese history were similar, thousand year old cash coins produced during the Northern Song dynasty continued to circulate as valid currency well into the early twentieth century.

A myriad is technically the number ten thousand; in that sense, the term is used almost exclusively in translations from Greek, Latin, or Chinese, or when talking about ancient Greek numbers. More generally, a myriad may be an indefinitely large number of things.

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 regards to gameplay but was an artifact from the earliest games.

Central Asia core region of the Asian continent

Central Asia stretches from the Caspian Sea in the west to China in the east and from Afghanistan in the south to Russia in the north. The region consists of the former Soviet republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. It is also colloquially referred to as "the stans" as the countries generally considered to be within the region all have names ending with the Persian suffix "-stan", meaning "land of".

<i>Madiao</i>

Madiao, also ma diao, ma tiu or ma tiao, is a late imperial Chinese trick-taking gambling card game, also known as the game of paper tiger. The deck used was recorded by Lu Rong in the 15th century and the rules later by Pan Zhiheng and Feng Menglong during the early 17th century. Korean poet Jang Hon (1759-1828) wrote that the game dates back to the Yuan dynasty (1271-1368). It continued to be popular during the Qing dynasty until around the mid-19th century. The game was also known in Japan from at least 1791. It is played with 40 cards and four players.

Ganjifa

Ganjifa, Ganjapa or Gânjaphâ, is a card game or type of playing cards that are most associated with Persia and India. After Ganjifa cards fell out of use in Iran before the twentieth century, India became the last country to produce them. The form prevalent in Odisha is Ganjapa.

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.

Polo equestrian team sport

Polo is a horseback mounted team sport. It is one of the world's oldest known team sports.

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 introduced to playing cards with the arrival of the Portuguese in the 1540s. 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).

Invention of the Germanic suits

Germanic suits [lower-alpha 5]
Swiss-German [lower-alpha 6] Roses [lower-alpha 7]
RosendeutschschweizerBlatt.svg
Bells [lower-alpha 8]
SchellendeutschschweizerBlatt.svg
Acorns [lower-alpha 9]
EichelndeutschschweizerBlatt.svg
Shields [lower-alpha 10]
Bouclier jeu de carte.svg
German Hearts [lower-alpha 11]
Bay herz.svg
Bells [lower-alpha 12]
Bay schellen.svg
Acorns [lower-alpha 13]
Bay eichel.svg
Leaves [lower-alpha 14]
Bay gras.svg
French Hearts
Suit Hearts.svg
Tiles
(Diamonds)
SuitDiamonds.svg
Clovers
(Clubs) [lower-alpha 15]
SuitClubs.svg
Pikes
(Spades) [lower-alpha 16]
SuitSpades.svg

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. [9] The Swiss-Germans developed their own suits of shields, roses, acorns, and bells around 1450. [10] 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. [11]

Tarot

Beginning around 1440 in northern Italy, some decks started to include of an extra suit of (usually) 21 numbered cards known as trionfi or trumps, to play tarot card games. [12] 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.

Suits in games with traditional decks

Trumps

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. [13] Non-trump suits are called plain suits. [14]

Special suits

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.

Ranking of suits

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.

As there is no truly standard way to order the four suits, each game that needs to do so has its own convention; however, the ubiquity of bridge has gone some way to make its ordering a de facto standard.[ citation needed ] Typical orderings of suits include (from highest to lowest):

Pairing or ignoring suits

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. [15]

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.

Fundamentally, there are three ways to divide four suits into pairs: by color, by rank and by shape resulting in six possible suit combinations.

In the event of widespread introduction of four-color decks, it has been suggested that the red/black distinction could be replaced by pointed bottoms (hearts and diamonds visually have a sharp point downwards, whereas spades and clubs have a blunt stem).

Four-color suits

The aces of a four-color deck 4coloraces1.jpg
The aces of a four-color deck

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. [16]

Historical French decks with extra suits

Numerous variations of the 52-card French deck have existed over the years. Most notably, Tarot Nouveau has a separate trump suit in addition to the four suits; however it is a series of cards of a different number and style than the suited cards. There have been many attempts at expanding the French deck to five, six or even more suits where the additional suits have the same number and style of cards as the French suits, but none have attained lasting popularity. [17]

In 1895, Hiram Jones of the United States created one of the earliest decks with extra suits called International Playing Cards. In addition to the four standard French suits, it had two additional suits, red crosses and black bullets. (The bullets of that period were spherical, hence the pip was a circle.) [18]

Five-suit bridge was an international fad lasting from the summer of 1937 to the summer of 1938 which led to a number of decks produced for it in Austria, Britain, and the United States. [19]

Five-suit decks

Historical decks

A number of the following out-of-print decks may be found, especially through on-line auctions.

Previously, Five Star Playing Cards (poker sized) were manufactured by Five Star Games, which had a gold colored fifth suit of five pointed stars. The court cards are almost identical to the diamond suit in a Gemaco Five-Star deck. Five-suit decks using the Star suit are still in print in differing designs through vendors such as Stardeck and Newton's Novelties.

Cadaco manufactured a game Tripoley Wild with a fifth suit (and other Wild Cards) which contain pips of all four standard suits (hearts, diamonds, spades, and clubs) on one card. That poker sized deck is not sold separately, but as part of boxed game. Five suited decks include Cinco-Loco Poker Playing Cards, produced by the USA Playing Card Company (not the United States Playing Card Company) which introduces a new suit design. The Cinco-Loco fifth suit uses a complicated pattern, with color designs in a repeating circular series of pentagrams with four traditional suits in a four color pattern, inner circles get increasingly smaller, the fifth symbol in the circle of pentagrams is a yellow pentagram. There are then a total of ten symbols in each of the outer and repeated in inner circles. The other suits use a four-color design.

5° Dimension is an 80-card deck introduced in 2007. The five suits are Hearts (red), Spades (black), Clubs (green), Diamonds (yellow) and Stars (blue). Each suit has 16 cards: 1 to 10, King, Queen, Jack, Princess, Ace (distinct from 1) and a Joker.

Commercial decks

A commercially available five-suit poker (65-card) deck is Stardeck which introduces stars as a fifth suit. In the Stardeck cards, the fifth suit is colored a mixture of black and red. This fifth suit can be counted as either a Red or a Black suit dependent upon the game being played. There are also 2 special cards (or Jokers), 1 each of red and black and shown with that colour star in the corner, but no numeral or letter.

Estate Playing Cards designed in 2006, is a contemporary five-suit (62-card) deck which adds a fifth suit (estate) called Waves. Estate cards signifies the five estates identified as Waves (green), Hearts (red), Diamonds (orange), Clubs (blue) and Spades (black). The three Royals are replaced with two Family - Man and Woman. Jokers are replaced with Imperials (Pope and President). Most games can be played, however they become more involved. 5 Card Poker traditionally has over 2 million possible hands with Royal Flush as the lowest probability. Estate Poker has 5,461,512 possible hands with Family Flush as the lowest probability and new hands such as Five of a Kind.

Five Crowns is yet another five-suited deck similar to that of 5° Dimension, The suits are Hearts (red), Spades (black), Clubs (green), Diamonds (blue) and Stars (yellow) with no-revoke suits. The deck contains 3 Jokers but does not contain aces or twos, making the card count per deck 58.

Six-suit decks

Historical decks

Out of print is the Nu-Dek Sextet Bridge deck (copyright Ralph E. Peterson 1964, 1966), manufactured for Sextet Contract Bridge Associates ("SECOBRA") by the United States Playing Card Company. Two blue suits are added to the standard four: Rackets being a pair of crossed tennis rackets, and Wheels from a ship's steering wheel design.

Another out of print six-suited (78-card) deck of poker sized playing cards is the Empire Deck, introduced in 1990. It has three red suits and three black suits, introducing crowns in red and anchors in black as in the dice game Crown and Anchor.

Commercial decks

Deck6 is a six-suited deck with three red suits (hearts, diamonds, shields), three black suits (clubs, spades, cups) and three jokers (total 81 cards).

The K6T deck is a six-suited (120-card) deck of poker sized playing cards. The traditional suits are colored (green clubs and orange diamonds) and are completed with blue moons and purple stars. Each suit has 20 cards ranked as 0(=Joker)-1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12-J-C(Cavalier for knight)-B(Bishop)-T(Tower for rook)-Q-K-Ace.

Eight-suit decks

Commercial decks

8 Suits Playing Cards, conceived in the late 1970s and manufactured through BrienmarK Products Inc., adds red Moons, black Stars, red four-leaved Clovers and black Tears. This deck was originally created to allow more players in a game of euchre.

The Fat Pack adds red Roses, black Axes, black Tridents and red Doves to the standard deck.

Toss™ Double Deluxe Decks consists of the traditional French suits plus gold Crosses and Oracles, blue Castles and Shields, five Jokers (one for each color plus a Boss Joker) and two Null cards.

Other suited decks

Suited-and-ranked decks

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. Examples include Mü und Mehr, Lost Cities, DUO, Sticheln, Rage, Schotten Totten, UNO, Phase 10 , Oh-No!, Skip-Bo, Roodles, and Rook.

Other modern decks

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.

Fictional decks

Several people have invented decks which are not meant to be seriously played. The Double Fanucci deck from Zork takes the most imaginative licence with the suits: it has no fewer than fifteen, with the names Mazes, Books, Rain, Bugs, Fromps, Inkblots, Scythes, Plungers, Faces, Time, Lamps, Hives, Ears, Zurfs, and Tops.

The Cripple Mr. Onion deck uses eight fictional suits, but may be simulated by combining the standard French suits with the traditional Latin suited ones or by using a modern 8-suited deck.

The Discordian deck is a parody of the Tarot deck, its five suits corresponding to the five Discordian elements.

The card game of sabacc from the Star Wars universe has the suits of staves, flasks, sabers, and coins (similar to Latin suits), with cards ranked one through fifteen, plus two each of eight other cards which have no suit.

The deck used in Firefly has suits of Plum, Peach, Orange, Apple, Apricot, and Banana.

In World of Warcraft , there are cards that randomly drop from humanoid enemies. If a player collected the entire suit, he/she could trade it for a trinket that would grant special abilities. Initially, this was limited to the ace through eight of the suits of Elementals, Beasts, Warlords, and Portals. A later content patch added the suits of Lunacy, Storms, Furies, and Blessings. The Inscription skill allowed the crafting of cards of the suits of Mages, Swords, Rogues, and Demons.

In Robert Asprin's MythAdventures series, Dragon Poker is played using a standard deck, but with the suits consisting of elves, ogres, unicorns and dragons.

Uses of playing card suit symbols

Card suit symbols occur in places outside card playing:

Character encodings

In computer and another 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 SuitBlack Heart SuitBlack Diamond SuitBlack Club Suit
Entity:&spades;&hearts;&diams;&clubs;
UTF code:U+2664 (9828dec)U+2661 (9825dec)U+2662 (9826dec)U+2667 (9831dec)
Symbol:♤♡♢♧
Name:White Spade SuitWhite Heart SuitWhite Diamond SuitWhite 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.

Metaphorical uses

In some card games the card suits have a dominance order: club (lowest) - diamond - heart - spade (highest). That led to in spades being used to mean more than expected, in abundance, very much. [22]

Other expressions drawn from bridge and similar games include strong suit (any area of personal strength) and follow suit (to imitate another's actions).

See also

Notes

  1. ↑ Sample pips come from the Venetian pattern
  2. ↑ Sample pips come from the Castilian pattern
  3. ↑ "Portuguese" is slightly misleading nomenclature. The suit system may have originated in Catalonia and spread out through the western Mediterranean before being replaced by the "Spanish" system. The association with Portugal comes from the fact that they continued to use it until completely going over to French suits at the beginning of the 20th century.
  4. ↑ Probably associated with the Duchy of Ferrara and likely abandoned after the 15th century.
  5. ↑ The French suit system is generally considered to be separate from the Germans and Swiss due to its different set of face cards. However, when comparing only the pips, it is Germanic.
  6. ↑ There does not appear to be a single universal system of correspondences between Swiss-German and French suits. Cards combining the two suit systems are manufactured in different versions with different combinations of suits.
  7. ↑ Swiss-German: Rosen
  8. ↑ Swiss-German: Schellen
  9. ↑ Swiss-German: Eichel
  10. ↑ Swiss-German: Schilten
  11. ↑ German: Herz (heart), Rot (red), Hungarian: Piros (red), Czech: Srdce (heart), Červené (red)
  12. ↑ German: Schellen (bells), Hungarian: Tök (pumpkin), Czech: Kule (balls)
  13. ↑ German: Eichel (acorn), Ecker (beechnut), Hungarian: Makk (acorn), Czech: Žaludy (acorns)
  14. ↑ German: Laub (leaves), Grün (green), Gras (grass), Blatt (leaf) Hungarian: Zöld (green), Czech: Listy (leaves), Zelené (green)
  15. ↑ The shape of the clubs symbol is believed to be an adaptation of the German suit of acorns. Clubs are also known as clovers, flowers and crosses. The French name for the suit is trèfles meaning clovers, the Italian name for the suit is fiori meaning flowers and the German name for the suit is Kreuz meaning cross.
  16. ↑ In the Germanic countries the spade was the symbol associated with the blade of a spade. The English term spade originally did not refer to the tool but was derived from the Spanish word espada meaning sword from the Spanish suit. Those symbols were later changed to resemble the digging tool instead to avoid confusion. In German and Dutch the suit is alternatively named Schippen and schoppen respectively, meaning shovels.

Related Research Articles

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A stripped deck (US) or shortened pack (UK) is a set of playing cards from which some cards have been removed. The removed cards are usually the pip cards. Many card games use stripped decks, and stripped decks for popular games are commercially available.

Tarot Cards used for games or for divination

The tarot is a pack of playing cards, used from the mid-15th century in various parts of Europe to play games such as Italian tarocchini, French tarot and Austrian Königrufen. Many of these tarot card games are still played today. In the late 18th century, some Tarot packs began to be used in parallel for divination in the form of tarotology and cartomancy and, later, specialist packs were developed for such occult purposes.

500 (card game) card game

500 or five hundred, also called bid Euchre is a trick-taking game that is an extension of euchre with some ideas from bridge. For two to six players, it is most commonly played by four players in partnerships, but is sometimes recommended as a good three-player game. It arose in America before 1900 and was promoted by the United States Playing Card Company, which copyrighted and marketed the rules in 1904. 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. 500 continues to enjoy popularity in Ohio and Pennsylvania, where it has been taught through six generations community-wide, and in other countries: Australia, New Zealand, Quebec and Shetland. The Originator of Five Hundred, US Playing Card Company of Cincinnati, Ohio, now headquarters across the Ohio River in Erlanger, Kentucky, west of Covington, KY. Five hundred is now the national game of Australia.

Ace playing card

An ace is a playing card, die or domino with a single pip. In the standard French deck, an ace has a single suit symbol located in the middle of the card, sometimes large and decorated, especially in the case of the ace of spades. This embellishment on the ace of spades started when King James VI of Scotland and I of England required an insignia of the printing house to be printed on the ace of spades. This insignia was necessary for identifying the printing house and stamping it as having paid the new stamp tax. Although this requirement was abolished in 1960, the tradition has been kept by many card makers. In other countries the stamp and embellishments are usually found on ace cards; clubs in France, diamonds in Russia, and hearts in Genoa because they have the most blank space.

The Joker is a playing card found in most modern card decks, as an addition to the standard four suits. The Joker originated in the United States during the Civil War and was created as a trump card for the game of Euchre. It has since been adopted into many other card games, where it may function as a wild card. The card is unique within the French pack in that it lacks an industry-wide standard appearance.

Standard 52-card deck common card deck used in English-speaking countries

The deck of French playing cards is the most common deck of playing cards used today. It includes thirteen ranks in each of the four French suits: clubs, diamonds, hearts and spades, with reversible "court" or face cards. Each suit includes an ace, a king, queen and jack, each depicted with a symbol of its suit; and ranks two through ten, with each card depicting that many symbols (pips) of its suit. Anywhere from one to six jokers, often distinguishable with one being more colorful than the other, are added to commercial decks, as some card games require these extra cards. Modern playing cards carry index labels on opposite corners or in all four corners to facilitate identifying the cards when they overlap and so that they appear identical for players on opposite sides. The most popular standard pattern of the French deck is sometimes referred to as "English" or "Anglo-American" pattern.

High card by suit and low card by suit refer to assigning relative values to playing cards of equal rank based on their suit. No standard ranking of suits exists for card games and not all games incorporate a suit ranking feature. When suit ranking is applied, the two most common conventions are:

A four-color deck is identical to the standard French deck except for the color of the suits. In a typical English four-color deck, hearts are red and spades are black as usual, but clubs are green and diamonds are blue. However, other color combinations have been used over the centuries, in other areas or for certain games.

Sheng ji

Sheng ji is a family of point-based, trick-taking card games played in China and in Chinese immigrant communities. They have a dynamic trump, i.e., which cards are trump changes every round. As these games are played over a wide area with no standardization, rules vary widely from region to region.

Cego card game

Cego or Baden Tarock, also called Ceco, is a tarot card game played mainly in Baden, the Black Forest, the adjacent Baar lowland and around Lake Constance in Switzerland and Austria. The game is similar to Königrufen and Tapp-Tarock. It is distinguished by a large skat, or talon, called "the Blind".

Tarot Nouveau tarot card deck used in France

The Tarot Nouveau, French Tarot Nouveau or Bourgeois Tarot deck is a pattern of tarot cards. As such it differs from those tarot decks used in fortune-telling, such as the Tarot of Marseilles and Rider-Waite decks, in that the Tarot Nouveau is designed solely for playing the various tarot card games for which the 78-card tarot deck was originally devised, such as the game of French Tarot. In the French language, this deck is often called the tarot à jouer or playing tarot. This usage is distinct from cartomancy and other divinatory purposes, for which the tarot is most commonly known outside Continental Europe. This deck is most commonly found in France, Wallonia, Romandy, Québec, and Denmark.

Euchre game variations

This article deals with variations in game playing. For a description on variations in game rules and terminology, see Euchre variations.

Glossary of card game terms

The following is a glossary of terms used in card games. Besides the terms listed here, there are thousands of common and uncommon slang terms. This list does not encompass terms that are specific to one game.

French playing cards card deck using suits of clubs, diamonds, hearts, and spades

French playing cards are cards that use the French suits of trèfles, carreaux, cœurs, and piques. Each suit contains three face cards; the valet, the dame, and the roi (king). 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 and the United Kingdom in the past two 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.

Scarto card game

Scarto is a three player trick-taking tarot card game from Piedmont, Italy. It is a simple tarot game which can serve as an introduction to more complex tarot games. The name comes from the discarded cards that were exchanged with the stock, which is also the origin of the name for the Skat card game.

References

  1. ↑ Parlett, David (1990). The Oxford Guide to Card Games. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 27–34.
  2. ↑ McLeod, John. Games classified by type of cards or tiles used at pagat.com. Retrieved 24 March 2017.
  3. ↑ Pollett, Andrea (2002). "Tuman, or the Ten Thousand Cups of the Mamluk Cards". The Playing-Card . 31 (1): 34–41.
  4. ↑ Mann, Sylvia (1974). "A Suit-System Subdivided". The Playing-Card . 3 (1): 51.
  5. ↑ McLeod, John. Games played with Latin suited cards at pagat.com. Retrieved 10 November 2015.
  6. ↑ Wintle, Adam. Portuguese Playing Cards at the World of Playing Cards. Retrieved 26 March 2017.
  7. ↑ Dummett, Michael (1990–1991). "A Survey of 'Archaic' Italian Cards". The Playing-Card . 19 (2, 4): 43–51, 128–131.
  8. ↑ Gjerde, Tor. Italian renaissance woodcut playing cards at old.no. Retrieved 26 March 2017.
  9. ↑ Meyer, Huck. Liechtenstein'sches Spiel at trionfi.com. Retrieved 24 March 2017.
  10. ↑ Dummett, Michael (1980). The Game of Tarot. London: Duckworth. pp. 14–16.
  11. ↑ Berry, John (1999). "French suits and English names". The Playing-Card . 28 (2): 84–89.
  12. ↑ McLeod, John. Card Games: Tarot Games at pagat.com. Retrieved 10 November 2015.
  13. ↑ McLeod, John. Mechanics of Card Games at pagat.com. Retrieved 24 March 2017.
  14. ↑ Parlett, David. The Language of Cards at David Parlett Gourmet Games. Retrieved 24 March 2017.
  15. ↑ Leyden, Rudolf von; Dummett, Michael (1982). Ganjifa, The Playing Cards of India. London: Victoria and Albert Museum. pp. 52–53.
  16. ↑ "Kartenbilder" (in German). deutscherskatverband.de. 17 January 2012. Retrieved 12 December 2012.
  17. ↑ McLeod, John. Packs with extra suits at pagat.com. Retrieved 1 February 2018.
  18. ↑ Dawson, Tom; Dawson, Judy (2014). The Hochman Encyclopedia of American Playing Cards - Volume 4 (2nd ed.). New York: Conjuring Arts Research Center. pp. 268–274.
  19. ↑ Wintle, Simon. Five Suit Bridge at the World of Playing Cards. Retrieved 1 February 2018.
  20. ↑ Zaloga, Steven J (2007). US Airborne Divisions in the ETO 1944-45. Osprey Publishing. p. 58.
  21. ↑ https://www.homestuck.com/story/2495/
  22. ↑ Martin, Gary. "'In spades' - the meaning and origin of this phrase". Retrieved 24 March 2017.
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