Playing Cards
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Playing card
Some typical modern playing cards
A playing card is a typically
hand-sized rectangular piece of heavy paper or thin plastic used for playing
card games.
Playing cards are often used as props in
magic tricks, as well as
occult
practices such as cartomancy, and a number of card games involve (or can be used to support)
gambling.
As a result, their use sometimes meets with disapproval from some orthodox
religious groups. They are also a popular
collectible (as distinct from the cards made specifically for
trading card games). Specialty and novelty decks are commonly produced for
collectors, often with political, cultural, or educational themes.
Shuffling a pack of cards
One side of each card (the "front" or "face")
carries markings that distinguish it from the others and determine its use under
the rules of the particular game being played, while the other side (the "back")
is identical for all cards, usually a plain color or abstract design. In most
games, the cards are assembled into a "deck" (or "pack"), and their order is
randomized by a procedure called "shuffling"
to provide an element of chance in the game.
The origin of playing cards is obscure, but it is
almost certain that they began in
China after the
invention of paper.
Ancient Chinese "money cards" have four "suits": coins (or cash), strings of
coins (which may have been misinterpreted as sticks from crude drawings),
myriads of strings, and tens of myriads. These were represented by
ideograms,
with numerals of 2-9 in the first three suits and numerals 1-9 in the "tens of
myriads". Wilkinson suggests in
The Chinese origin of playing cards that the first cards may have been
actual paper currency which were both the tools of gaming and the stakes being
played for. The designs on modern
Mah Jong
tiles and dominoes
likely evolved from those earliest playing cards. The Chinese word p'ai
is used to describe both paper cards and gaming tiles.
The time and manner of the introduction of cards
into Europe are matters of dispute. The 38th canon of the council of Worcester
(1240) is often quoted as evidence of cards having been known in England in the
middle of the 13th century; but the games de rege et regina there
mentioned are now thought to more likely have been
chess. If cards
were generally known in Europe as early as 1278, it is very remarkable that
Petrarch,
in his dialogue that treats gaming, never once mentions them.
Boccaccio,
Chaucer and other writers of that time specifically refer to various games,
but there is not a single passage in their works that can be fairly construed to
refer to cards. Passages have been quoted from various works, of or relative to
this period, but modern research leads to the supposition that the word rendered
cards has often been mistranslated or interpolated.
It is likely that the ancestors of modern cards
arrived in Europe
from the
Mamelukes of
Egypt in the late
1300s, by which time they had already assumed a form very close to those in
use today. In particular, the Mameluke deck contained 52 cards comprising four
"suits": polo sticks, coins, swords, and cups. Each suit contained ten "spot"
cards (cards identified by the number of suit symbols or "pips" they show) and
three "court" cards named malik (King), nā'ib malik (Viceroy
or Deputy King), and thānī nā'ib (Second or Under-Deputy). The Mameluke
court cards showed abstract designs not depicting persons (at least not in any
surviving specimens) though they did bear the names of miltary officers. A
complete pack of Mameluke playing cards was discovered by L.A. Mayer in the
Topkapi Sarayi Museum, Istanbul, in 1939; this particular complete pack was not
made before 1400, but the complete deck allowed matching to a private fragment
dated to the twelfth or thirteenth century. There is some evidence to suggest
that this deck may have evolved from an earlier 48-card deck that had only two
court cards per suit, and some further evidence to suggest that earlier Chinese
cards brought to Europe may have travelled to Persia, which then influenced the
Mameluke and other Egyptian cards of the time before their reappearance in
Europe. It is not known whether these cards influenced the design of the Indian cards used
for the game of Ganjifa, or whether the Indian cards may have influenced these,
but the Indian cards have many distinctive elements, such being round, being
generally had painted with intricate designs, and comprising more than four
suits (often as many as twelve).
In the late 1300s, the use of playing cards
spread rapidly across Europe. The first widely-accepted references to cards are
in 1371 in Spain, in 1377 in Switzerland, and in 1380 they are referenced in
many locations including Florence, Paris, and Barcelona. A Paris ordinance dated
1369 does not mention cards; its 1377 update includes cards. In the
account-books of Johanna, duchess of Brabant, and her husband, Wenceslaus of
Luxemburg, there is an entry under date of the May 14, 1379 as follows: "Given
to Monsieur and Madame four peters, two forms, value eight and a half moutons,
wherewith to buy a pack of cards". An early mention of a distinct series of
playing cards is the entry of Charles or Charbot Poupart, treasurer of the
household of
Charles VI of France, in his book of accounts for 1392 or 1393, which
records payment for the painting of three sets or packs of cards, which were
evidently already well known.
It is clear that the earliest cards were executed
by hand, like those designed for Charles VI. However, this was quite expensive,
so other means were needed to mass-produce them. It may be that the art of wood
engraving, which led to that of printing, may have been developed through the
demand for the multiplication of implements of play. The belief that the early
card makers or cardpainters of Ulm, Nuremberg and Augsburg, from about 1418 to
1450, were also wood engravers, is founded on the assumption that the cards of
that period were printed from wood blocks. Many of the earliest woodcuts were
colored by means of a stencil, so it would seem that at the time wood engraving
was first introduced, the art of depicting and coloring figures by means of
stencil plates was well known. There are no playing cards engraved on wood to
which so early a date as 1423 (that of the earliest dated wood engraving
generally accepted) can be fairly assigned; and as at this period there were
professional card makers established in Germany, it is probable that wood
engraving was employed to produce cuts for sacred subjects before it was applied
to cards, and that there were hand-painted and stencilled cards before there
were wood engravings of saints. The German Brief maler or card-painter
probably progressed into the wood engraver; but there is no proof that the
earliest wood engravers were the card-makers.
The Europeans experimented with the structure of
playing cards, particularly in the 1400s. Europeans changed the court cards to
represent European royalty and attendants, originally "king", "chevalier", and
"knave" (or "servant"). Queens were introduced in a number of different ways. In
an early surviving German pack (dated in the 1440s), Queens replace Kings in two
of the suits as the highest card. Throughout the 1400s, 56-card decks were
common containing a King, Queen, Knight, and Valet. Suits also varied; many
makers saw no need to have a standard set of names for the suits, so early decks
often had different suit names (though typically 4 suits).
The cards manufactured by
German
printers used the suits of hearts, bells, leaves, and acorns still present in
German decks today used for
Skat and other
games. Later Italian and Spanish cards of the 15th century used swords, batons,
cups, and coins. It is likely that the
Tarot deck was
invented in Italy at that time, though it is often mistakenly believed to have
been imported into Europe by Gypsies. While originally (and still in some
places) used for the game of
Tarocchi,
the Tarot deck today is more often used for
cartomancy
and other occult practices. This probably came about in the 1780s, when occult
philosophers mistakenly associated the symbols on Tarot cards with Egyptian
hieroglyphs.
The four suits (hearts,
diamonds,
spades,
clubs) now used
in most of the world originated in France, approximately in
1480. The
trčfle, so named for its resemblance to the trefoil leaf, was probably
copied from the acorn; the pique similarly from the leaf of the German
suits, while its name derived from the sword of the Italian suits. It is not
derived from its resemblance to a pike head, as commonly supposed. In England
the French suits were used, and are named hearts, clubs (corresponding to
trčfle, the French symbol being joined to the Italian name, bastoni),
spades (corresponding to the French pique, but having the Italian name,
spade=sword) and diamonds. This confusion of names and symbols is accounted for
by Chatto thus:
"If cards were actually known in Italy and
Spain in the latter part of the 14th century, it is not unlikely that the game
was introduced into this country by some of the English soldiers who had
served under Hawkwood and other free captains in the wars of Italy and Spain.
However this may be, it seems certain that the earliest cards commonly used in
this country were of the same kind, with respect to the marks of the suits, as
those used in Italy and Spain."
Court cards have likewise undergone some changes
in design and name. Early court cards were elaborate full-length figures; the
French in particular often gave them the names of particular heroes and heroines
from history and fable. A prolific manufacturing center in the 1500s was
Rouen, which
originated many of the basic design elements of court cards still present in
modern decks. It is likely that the Rouennais cards were popular imports in
England, establishing their design as standard there, though other designs
became more popular in Europe (particularly in France, where the Parisian design
became standard).
Rouen courts are traditionally named as follows:
the kings of spades, hearts, diamonds, and clubs are David, Alexander, (Julius)
Caesar, and Charles (Charlemagne), respectively. The knaves (or "jacks"; French
"valet") are Hector (prince of Troy), La Hire (comrade-in-arms to Joan of Arc),
Ogier (a knight of Charlemagne), and Judas Maccabee (who led the Jewish
rebellion against the Syrians). The queens are Pallas (warrior goddess;
equivalent to the Greek Athena or Roman minerva), Rachel (biblical mother of
Joseph), Argine (the origin of which is obscure), and Judith (of the Apocrypha).
Parisian tradition uses the same names, but assigns them to different suits: the
kings of spades, hearts, diamonds, and clubs are are David, Charles, Caesar, and
Alexander; the queens are Pallas, Judith, Rachel, and Argine; the knaves are
Ogier, Le Hire, Hector, and Judas Maccabee. Oddly, the Parisian names have
become more common in modern use, even with cards of Rouennais design.
In early games the kings were always the
highest card in their suit. However, as early as the late 1400s special
significance began to be placed on the nominally lowest card, now called the
Ace, so that it sometimes became the highest card. This concept may have been
hastened in the late 1700s by the
French Revolution, where games began being played "ace high" as a symbol of
lower classes raising in power above the royalty. The term "Ace" itself comes
from a dicing term in Anglo-Normal French, which is itself derived from the
Latin as (the smallest unit of coinage). Another dicing term, trey
(3), sometimes shows up in playing card games.
Corner and edge indices appeared in the
mid-1800s, which enabled people to hold their cards close together in a fan with
one hand (instead of the two hands previously used). Before this time, the
lowest court card in English cards was officially termed the Knave, but
its abbreviation ("Kn") was too similar to the King ("K"). However, from the
1600s on the Knave had often been termed the Jack, a term borrowed from
the game All
Fours where the Knave of trumps is termed the Jack. All Fours was considered
a low-class game, so the use of the term Jack at one time was considered vulgar.
The use of indices changed the formal name of the lowest court card to Jack.
This was followed by the innovation of reversible
court cards. Reversible court cards meant that players would not be tempted to
make upside-down court cards right side up. Before this, other players could
often get a hint of what other player's hands contained by watching them reverse
their cards. This innovation required abandoning some of the design elements of
the earlier full-length courts.
The
Joker was an
American innovation. Created for the Alsatian game of
Euchre, it then
spread to Europe from America along with the spread of
Poker. Although
the Joker card often bears the image of a fool, which is one of the images of
the Tarot deck, it is not believed that there is any relation.
Most card games simply do not have universally
accepted official rules (Contract
bridge being one of a few notable exceptions). Instead, there are many rule
books that attempt to capture rules (and common variations) as practiced by at
least some people they have interviewed. When moving from one group to another,
the rules will often change, so it is wise for any group to be sure they
understand the rules they'll use before beginning.
In the
1740s
Edmond Hoyle determined that, since so many people were interested in
learning to play the card game
Whist well, he
would become a professional Whist tutor. Along with personal instruction, he
also wrote down his basic approaches to playing Whist well in a small book which
his clients could buy. The book was popular but unaffordable to many, so many
illegal or questionable copies were made. In November
1742 Hoyle
copyrighted the work, and made the work more widely available; copies of the
book were extremely popular. Hoyle never actually wrote down the rules of Whist;
he presumed that his reader already knew the basic rules, and his work was
focused on teaching how to play it well. Observing his own success, Hoyle
immediately wrote books on other subjects (Backgammon,
Piquet,
Chess, and
Brag). Hoyle died on August 29,
1769.
Hoyle's works began the idea of selling popular
game books. Many of these books contain the word "Hoyle" (just as many
dictionaries contain the word "Webster"), but Hoyle would not recognize most of
the games described in today's books. In particular, having the world "Hoyle" in
a title does not give a book any greater authority, since anyone can write a
book with Hoyle's name in the title.
The primary playing cards in use today, called
Anglo-American playing cards, includes the English suits, reversible
Rouennais court cards, and usually two Jokers (often distinguishable, with one
being more colorful than the other). The fanciful design and manufacturer's logo
often 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.
Though specific design elements of the court
cards are rarely used in game play, a few are notable: the jack of spades and
jack of hearts are drawn in profile, while the rest of the courts are shown in
full face, leading to the former being called the "one-eyed" jacks. The king of
hearts is shown with a
broadsword behind his head, leading to the name "suicide king".
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