card games

A playing card is a piece of specially prepared heavy paper or thin card, figured with distinguishing motifs and used as one of a set for playing card games. Playing cards are typically palm-sized for convenient handling and since the mid 20th century have sometimes been manufactured from plastic. A complete set of cards is called a pack or deck. A deck of cards may be used for playing a great variety of card games, some of which may also incorporate gambling. Because playing cards are both standardized and commonly available, they are often adapted for other uses, such as magic tricks, cartomancy, encryption, boardgames, or building a house of cards.
The front (or "face") of each card carries markings that distinguish it from the other cards in the deck and determine its use under the rules of the game being played. The back of each card is identical for all cards in any particular deck, and usually of a single color or formalized design. The back of playing cards is sometimes used for advertising. For most games, the cards are assembled into a deck, and their order is randomized by shuffling.
Playing cards emerged in 12th century China.[1][2] 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 that the first cards may have been actual paper currency which were both the tools of gaming and the stakes being played for.[3] The designs on modern Mahjong tiles likely evolved from those earliest playing cards. However, it may be that the first deck of cards ever printed was a Chinese domino deck, in whose cards we can see all the 21 combinations of a pair of dice. In Kuei-t'ien-lu, a Chinese text redacted in the 11th century, we find that dominoes cards were printed during the T’ang dynasty, contemporary to the first books. The Chinese word pái (牌) is used to describe both paper cards and gaming tiles.
An Indian origin for playing cards has been suggested by the resemblance of symbols on some early European decks (traditional Sicilian cards, for example) to the ring, sword, cup, and baton classically depicted in the four hands of Indian statues.[citation needed]
The time and manner of the introduction of cards into Europe are matters of dispute. The 38th canon of the council of Worcester (1240)[citation needed] 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 (on the king and the queen) 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 work De remediis utriusque fortunae (On the remedies of good/bad fortunes) 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 precursor 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 that 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 military officers.
A complete pack of Mameluke playing cards was discovered by L.A. Mayer in the Topkapi Sarayi Museum, Istanbul, in 1939 [1]; 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. In effect it’s not a complete deck, but there are cards of three different packs of the same style [4]() 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.
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. Regardless, the Indian cards have many distinctive features: they are round, generally hand painted with intricate designs, and comprise more than four suits (often as many as thirty two, like a deck in the Deutsches Spielkarten-Museum, painted in the Mewar, a city in Rajasthan, between the 18th and 19th century. Decks used to play have from eight up to twenty different suits).
In the late 14th century, the use of playing cards spread rapidly throughout Europe. Documents mentioning cards date from 1371 in Spain, 1377 in Switzerland, and 1380 in many locations including Florence, Paris, and Barcelona [2] [3]. A 1369 Paris ordinance [on gaming?] does not mention cards, but its 1377 update does. In the account books of Johanna, duchess of Brabant and Wenceslaus of Luxemburg, an entry dated May 14, 1379, reads: "Given to Monsieur and Madame four peters, two forms, value eight and a half moutons, wherewith to buy a pack of cards". In his book of accounts for 1392 or 1393, Charles or Charbot Poupart, treasurer of the household of Charles VI of France, records payment for the painting of three sets of cards.
The earliest cards were made by hand, like those designed for Charles VI; this was expensive. Printed woodcut decks appeared in the 15th century. The technique of printing woodcuts to decorate fabric was transferred to printing on paper around 1400 in Christian Europe, very shortly after the first recorded manufacture of paper there, while in Islamic Spain it was much older. The earliest dated European woodcut is 1418. No examples of printed cards from before 1423 survive. But from about 1418 to 1450[4], professional card makers in Ulm, Nuremberg, and Augsburg created printed decks. Playing cards even competed with devotional images as the most common uses for woodcut in this period.
Most early woodcuts of all types were coloured after printing, either by hand or, from about 1450 onwards, stencils. These 15th century playing cards were probably painted.
The Master of the Playing Cards worked in Germany from the 1430s with the newly invented printmaking technique of engraving. Several other important engravers also made cards, including Master ES and Martin Schongauer. Engraving was much more expensive than woodcut, and engraved cards must have been relatively unusual.
In the 15th century in Europe, the suits in playing cards varied; typically a deck had four suits, although five suits were common and other structures are also known. In Germany, hearts, bells, leaves, and acorns became the standard suits and are still used in Eastern and Southeastern German decks today for Skat and other games. Italian and Spanish cards of the 15th century used swords, batons, cups, and coins. The Tarot, which included extra trump cards, was invented in Italy in the 15th century.
The four suits (spades, hearts, diamonds, clubs) now used in most of the world originated in France in approximately 1480 . The trèfle (club) was probably copied from the acorn and the pique (spade) from the leaf of the German suits. (The names "pique" and "spade", however, may have derived from the sword of the Italian suits[5]). In England, the French suits were eventually used, although the earliest decks had the Italian suits[Chatto, link not providedAlso in the 15th century, Europeans changed the court cards to represent European royalty and attendants, originally "king", "chevalier", and "knave" (or "servant"). In a German pack from the 1440s, Queens replace Kings in two of the suits as the highest card. Fifty-six-card decks containing a King, Queen, Knight, and Valet were common.
Court cards designed in the 16th century in the manufacturing centre of Rouen became the standard design in England, while a Parisian design became standard in France. Both the Parisian and Rouennais court cards were named after historical and mythological heroes and heroines. The Parisian names have become more common in modern use, even with cards of Rouennais design.
King of Spades: DavidKing of Hearts: Charles (possibly Charlemagne, or Charles VII, where Rachel would then be the pseudonym of his mistress, Agnès Sorel)King of Diamonds: Julius CaesarKing of Clubs: Alexander the Great
Queen of Spades: PallasQueen of Hearts: JudithQueen of Diamonds: Rachel (either biblical, historical (see Charles above), or mythical as a corruption of the Celtic Ragnel, relating to Lancelot below)Queen of Clubs: Argine (possibly an anagram of regina, which is Latin for queen, or perhaps Argea, wife of Polybus and mother of Argus)
Knave of Spades: Ogier the Dane/Holger Danske (a knight of Charlemagne)Knave of Hearts: La Hire (comrade-in-arms to Joan of Arc, and member of Charles VII's court)Knave of Diamonds: HectorKnave of Clubs: Judas Maccabeus, or Lancelot