Playing card

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.[1]

Contents Modern playing cards

History
Early history
Persia and Arabia
Egypt
Spread across Europe and early design changes
Later design changes
Modern deck formats
French suits
Symbols in Unicode
See also
Further reading
References
Cited sources
External links

History

Early history
Playing cards may have been invented during the Tang dynasty around the 9th century AD as a result of the usage of woodblock
printing technology and there were 30 cards in a deck.[2][3][4][5][6] The first possible reference to card games comes from a 9th-
century text known as the Collection of Miscellanea at Duyang, written by Tang dynasty writer Su E. It describes Princess
Tongchang, daughter of Emperor Yizong of Tang, playing the "leaf game" in 868 with members of the clan of Wei Baoheng, the
family of the princess' husband.[4][7][8]:131 The first known book on the "leaf" game was called theYezi Gexi and allegedly written by
a Tang woman. It received commentary by writers of subsequent dynasties.[9] The Song dynasty (960–1279) scholar Ouyang Xiu
(1007–1072) asserts that the "leaf" game existed at least since the mid-Tang dynasty and associated its invention with the
development of printed sheetsas a writing medium.[9][4] However, Ouyang also claims that the "leaves" were pages of a book used in
[10]
a board game played with dice, and that the rules of the game were lost by 1067.

Other games revolving around alcoholic drinking involved using playing cards of a sort from the Tang dynasty onward. However
[10]
these cards did not contain suits or numbers. Instead, they were printed with instructions or forfeits for whoever drew them.
The earliest dated instance of a game involving cards with suits and numerals occurred on 17
July 1294 when "Yan Sengzhu and Zheng Pig-Dog were caught playing cards [zhi pai] and that
[10]
wood blocks for printing them had been impounded, together with nine of the actual cards."

William Henry Wilkinson suggests that the first cards may have been actual paper currency
which doubled as both the tools of gaming and the stakes being played for,[3] similar to trading
card games. Using paper money was inconvenient and risky so they were substituted by play
money known as "money cards". One of the earliest games in which we know the rules is
Madiao, a trick-taking game, which dates to the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644). Fifteenth century
scholar Lu Rong described it is as being played with 38 "money cards" divided into four suits: 9
in coins, 9 in strings of coins (which may have been misinterpreted as sticks from crude
drawings), 9 in myriads (of coins or of strings), and 11 in tens of myriads (a myriad is 10,000).
The two latter suits had Water Margin characters instead of pips on them [8]:132 with Chinese
characters to mark their rank and suit. The suit of coins is in reverse order with 9 of coins being
the lowest going up to 1 of coins as the high card.[11]

Persia and Arabia

Despite the wide variety of patterns, the suits show a uniformity of structure. Every suit contains
twelve cards with the top two usually being thecourt cards of king and vizier and the bottom ten
being pip cards. Half the suits use reverse ranking for their pip cards. There are many motifs for
the suit pips but some include coins, clubs, jugs, and swords which resemble later Mamluk and
Latin suits. Michael Dummett speculated that Mamluk cards may have descended from an A Chinese printed playing
card dated c. 1400 AD,
earlier deck which consisted of 48 cards divided into four suits each with ten pip cards and two
Ming Dynasty, found near
court cards.[12]
Turpan, measuring 9.5 by
3.5 cm.

Egypt
By the 11th century, playing cards were spreading throughout the
Asian continent and later came into Egypt.[8]:309 The oldest
surviving cards in the world are four fragments found in the Keir
Collection and one in the Benaki Museum. They are dated to the
12th and 13th centuries (late Fatimid, Ayyubid, and early
Mamluk periods).[13]

A near complete pack ofMamluk playing cards dating to the 15th

century and of similar appearance to the fragments above was
discovered by Leo Aryeh Mayer in the Topkapı Palace, Istanbul,
in 1939.[14] It is not a complete set and is actually composed of
three different packs, probably to replace missing cards.[15] The Four Mamluk playing cards.
Topkapı pack originally contained 52 cards comprising four suits:
polo-sticks, coins, swords, and cups. Each suit contained ten pip
cards and three court cards, called malik (king), nā'ib malik (viceroy or deputy king), and thānī nā'ib (second or under-deputy). The
thānī nā'ib is a non-existent title so it may not have been in the earliest versions; without this rank, the Mamluk suits would
structurally be the same as a Ganjifa suit. In fact, the word "Kanjifah" appears in Arabic on the king of swords and is still used in
parts of the Middle East to describe modern playing cards. Influence from further east can explain why the Mamluks, most of whom
were Central Asian Turkic Kipchaks, called their cups tuman which means myriad in Turkic, Mongolian and Jurchen languages.[16]
ideogram for myriad (万).
Wilkinson postulated that the cups may have been derived from inverting the Chinese and Jurchen
The Mamluk court cards showed abstract designs or calligraphy not depicting persons possibly due to religious proscription in Sunni
Islam, though they did bear the ranks on the cards. Nā'ib would be borrowed into French (nahipi), Italian (naibi), and Spanish
(naipes), the latter word still in common usage. Panels on the pip cards in two suits show they had a reverse ranking, a feature found
in Madiao, Ganjifa, and old European card games likeOmbre, Tarot, and Maw.[17]

A fragment of two uncut sheets of Moorish-styled cards of a similar but plainer style were found in Spain and dated to the early 15th
century.[18]

Export of these cards (from Cairo, Alexandria, and Damascus), ceased after the fall of the Mamluks in the sixteenth century.[19] The
rules to play these games are lost but they are believed to beplain trick games without trumps.[20]

Spread across Europe and early design changes

Four-suited playing cards are first attested inSouthern Europe in 1365,[10] and are likely
derived from the Mamluk suits of cups, coins, swords, and polo-sticks, which are still
used in traditional Latin decks.[21] As polo was an obscure sport to Europeans then, the
polo-sticks became batons or cudgels.[22] Their presence is attested in Catalonia in
1371, 1377 in Switzerland, and 1380 in many locations including Florence and
Paris.[23][24][25] Wide use of playing cards in Europe can, with some certainty, be traced
from 1377 onwards.[26]

In the account books of Johanna, Duchess of Brabant and Wenceslaus I, Duke of

Luxembourg, 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.[27]

From about 1418 to 1450[28] professional card makers in Ulm, Nuremberg, and Knave of Coins from the oldest
Augsburg created printed decks. Playing cards even competed with devotional images as known European deck
the most common uses for woodcuts in this period. Most early woodcuts of all types (c. 1390–1410).
were coloured after printing, either by hand or, from about 1450 onwards, stencils.
These 15th-century playing cards were probably painted. The Flemish Hunting Deck,
held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art is the oldest complete set of ordinary playing cards made in Europe from the fifteenth
century.[29]

As cards spread from Italy to Germanic countries, the Latin suits were replaced with the suits of Leaves (or Shields), Hearts (or
Roses), Bells, and Acorns, and a combination of Latin and Germanic suit pictures and names resulted in the French suits of trèfles
(clovers), carreaux (tiles), cœurs (hearts), and piques (pikes) around 1480. The trèfle (clover) was probably derived from the acorn
and the pique (pike) from the leaf of the German suits. The names pique and spade, however, may have derived from the sword
(spade) of the Italian suits.[30] In England, the French suits were eventually used, although the earliest packs circulating may have
had Latin suits.[31] This may account to why the English called the clovers "clubs" and the pikes "spades".

In the late 14th century, Europeans changed the Mamluk court cards to represent European royalty and attendants. In a description
from 1377, the earliest courts were originally a seated King",
" an upper marshal that held his suit symbol up, and a lower marshal that
held it down.[32][33] The latter two correspond with the Ober and Unter cards found in German and Swiss playing cards. The Italians
and Iberians replaced the Ober/Unter system with the "Knight" and "Fante" or "Sota" before 1390, perhaps to make the cards more
visually distinguishable. In England, the lowest court card was called the "Knave" which originally meant male child (compare
German Knabe), so in this context the character could represent the "prince", son to the King and Queen; the meaning servant
developed later.[34][35] Queens appeared sporadically in packs as early as 1377, especially in Germany. Although the Germans
abandoned the Queen before the 1500s, the French permanently picked it up and placed it under the King. Packs of 56 cards
containing in each suit a King, Queen, Knight, and Knave (as in tarot) were once common in the 15th century
.
During the mid 16th century, Portuguese traders introduced playing cards to Japan. The first indigenous Japanese deck was the
Tenshō karuta named after the Tenshō period.[36]

Later design changes

Packs with corner and edge indices (i.e. the value of the card printed at the corner(s)
of the card) enabled players to hold their cards close together in a fan with one hand
(instead of the two hands previously used). The first such pack known with Latin
suits was printed by Infirerra and dated 1693,[37] but this feature was commonly
used only from the end of the 18th century. The first Anglo-American deck with this
innovation was the Saladee's Patent, printed by Samuel Hart in 1864. In 1870, he
and his cousins at Lawrence & Cohen followed up with the Squeezers, the first cards
with indices that had a large diffusion.[38]

This was followed by the innovation of reversible court cards. This invention is
attributed to a French card maker of Agen in 1745. But the French government,
which controlled the design of playing cards, prohibited the printing of cards with
this innovation. In central Europe (Trappola cards) and Italy (Tarocco Bolognese)
the innovation was adopted during the second half of the 18th century. In Great
Britain the pack with reversible court cards was patented in 1799 by Edmund
Ludlow and Ann Wilcox. The Anglo-American pack with this design was printed
Imperial Bower, the earliest Joker, by
around 1802 by Thomas Wheeler.[39] Samuel Hart, c. 1863. It contains
instructions for unfamiliar players.
Sharp corners wear out more quickly, and could possibly reveal the card's value, so
they were replaced with rounded corners. Before the mid-19th century, British,
American, and French players preferred blank backs. The need to hide wear and tear and to discourage writing on the back led cards
[40][41]
to have designs, pictures, photos, or advertising on the reverse.

The United States introduced the Joker into the deck. It was devised for the game of Euchre, which spread from Europe to America
beginning shortly after the American Revolutionary War. In Euchre, the highest trump card is the Jack of the trump suit, called the
right bower (from the German Bauer); the second-highest trump, the left bower, is the Jack of the suit of the same color as trumps.
The joker was invented c. 1860 as a third trump, the imperial or best bower, which ranked higher than the other two bowers.[42] The
name of the card is believed to derive from juker, a variant name for Euchre.[43][44] The earliest reference to a Joker functioning as a
wild card dates to 1875 with a variation of poker.[45]

Modern deck formats

Contemporary playing cards are grouped into three broad categories based on the suits they use: French, Latin, and Germanic. Latin
suits are used in the closely related Spanish and Italian formats. The Swiss-German suits are distinct enough to merit their
subcategory. Excluding Jokers and Tarot trumps, the French 52-card deck preserves the number of cards in the original Mamluk deck,
while Latin and Germanic decks average fewer. Latin decks usually drop the higher-valued pip cards, while Germanic decks drop the
lower-valued ones.

Within suits, there are regional or national variations called "standard patterns" because they are in the public domain, allowing
multiple card manufacturers to copy them.[46] Pattern differences are most easily found in the face cards but the number of cards per
deck, the use of numeric indices, or even minor shape and arrangement differences of the pips can be used to distinguish them. Some
patterns have been around for hundreds of years. Jokers are not part of any pattern as they are a relatively recent invention and lack
any standardized appearance so each publisher usually puts their own trademarked illustration into their decks. The wide variation of
jokers has turned them into collectible items. Any card that bore the stamp duty like the ace of spades in England or the ace of clubs
in France are also collectible as that is where the manufacturer's logo is usually placed.
French suits
Hearts Diamonds Clubs Spades
English

Hearts Tiles Clovers Pikes

French

Cups Coins Clubs Swords

Italian
52 French playing cards with jokers

Cups Coins Clubs Swords

French decks come in a variety of patterns and deck sizes. Spanish
The 52-card deck is the most popular deck and includes 13
ranks of each suit with reversible "court" or face cards. Each Roses Bells Acorns Shields
suit includes an Ace, depicting a single symbol of its suit, a Swiss-German
King, Queen, and Jack, each depicted with a symbol of their
suit; and ranks two through ten, with each card depicting that Hearts Bells Acorns Leaves
number of pips of its suit. As well as these 52 cards, German
commercial packs often include between one and four jokers,
most often two.

The piquet pack has all values from 2 through 6 in each suit removed for a total of 32 cards. It is popular in France, the Low
Countries, Central Europe and Russia and is used to play Piquet, Belote, Bezique and Skat. Forty-card French suited packs are
common in northwest Italy; these remove the 8s through 10s like Latin suited decks. 24 card decks, removing 2s through 8s are also
sold in Austria and Bavaria to playSchnapsen.

A pinochle deck consists of two copies of each of the 9, 10, jack, queen, king, and ace cards of all four suits. It thus comprises just 48
cards per deck.

The 78 card Tarot Nouveau adds the Knight card between Queens and Jacks along with 21 numbered trumps and the unnumbered
Fool.

Symbols in Unicode
The Unicode standard for text encoding on computers defines 8 characters for card suits in the Miscellaneous Symbols block, at
U+2660–2667. Unicode 7.0 added a unified pack for French-suited Tarot Nouveau's trump cards and the 52 cards of the modern
French pack, with 4 Knights, together with a character for "Playing Card Back" and black, red, and white jokers in the block
U+1F0A0–1F0FF.[47]

See also
Geographic origin:

Chinese playing cards

French playing cards
Ganjifa
Hanafuda
German playing cards
Italian playing cards
Karuta
Spanish playing cards
Swiss playing cards
Tujeon
Types of decks:

Standard 52-card deck

Stripped deck
Tarot
Trading card
Transformation playing card
Trick deck
Specific decks:

Archaeology awareness playing cards

Most-wanted Iraqi playing cards
Politicards
Zener cards (parapsychology)
Uses:

Card game
Card manipulation
Card money
Card throwing
House of cards
Sleight of hand
Terminology:

Glossary of card game terms

List of playing card nicknames
Sources for further information:

Cary Collection of Playing Cards

International Playing-Card Society
Musée Français de la Carte à Jouer
Museum of Fournier de Naipes
Playing card manufacturers

Further reading
Maltese playing cards.Bonello, Giovanni (January 2005). Michael Cooper, ed. "The Playing-card" (PDF). Journal of
the International Playing-Card Society. London. 32 (3): 191–197. ISSN 0305-2133. Archived from the original (PDF)
on 29 April 2005.
Griffiths, Antony. Prints and PrintmakingBritish Museum Press (in UK),2nd edn, 1996ISBN 0-7141-2608-X
Hind, Arthur M. An Introduction to a History of Woodcut. Houghton Mifflin Co. 1935 (in USA), reprinted Dover
Publications, 1963 ISBN 0-486-20952-0
Roman du Roy Meliadus de Leonnoys (British Library MS Add. 12228, fol. 313v), c. 1352
Singer, Samuel Weller (1816), Researches into the History of Playing Cards, R. Triphook

References
1. "Who invented playing cards? - Quatr.us" (http://quatr.us/games/playingcards.htm). quatr.us.
2. Needham 1986d, pp. 131–132.
3. Wilkinson, W.H. (1895). "Chinese Origin of Playing Cards"(http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1525/aa.1895.8.1.02
a00070/abstract?systemMessage=Wiley+Online+Library+will+be+disrupted+5+Nov+from+10-12+GMT+for+monthly
+maintenance). American Anthropologist. VIII (1): 61–78. doi:10.1525/aa.1895.8.1.02a00070(https://doi.org/10.152
5%2Faa.1895.8.1.02a00070).
 4. Lo, A. (2009). "The game of leaves: An inquiry into the origin of Chinese playing cards".
Bulletin of the School of
Oriental and African Studies. 63 (3): 389. doi:10.1017/S0041977X00008466(https://doi.org/10.1017%2FS0041977X
00008466).
5. Needham 2004, p. 328 "it is also now rather well-established that dominoes and playing-cards were originally
Chinese developments from dice."
6. Needham 2004, p. 334 "Numbered dice, anciently widespread, were on a related line of development which gave
rise to dominoes and playing-cards (+9th-century China)."
7. Zhou, Songfang (1997). "On the Story of Late a
Tng Poet Li He". Journal of the Graduates Sun Yat-sen University. 18
(3): 31–35.
8. Needham, Joseph and Tsien Tsuen-hsuin. (1985). Science and Civilization in China: Volume 5, Chemistry and
Chemical Technology, Part 1, Paper and Printing. Cambridge University Press., reprinted T
aipei: Caves Books, Ltd.
(1986)
9. Needham 2004, p. 132
10. Parlett, David, "The Chinese "Leaf" Game(http://www.davpar.eu/histocs/leafgame.html)", March 2015.
11. Money-suited playing cards(http://www.themahjongtileset.co.uk/money-suited-playing-cards/) at The Mahjong Tile
Set
12. Playing card basics (http://i-p-c-s.org/faq/basics.php)at the International Playing-Card Societywebsite
13. Dummett, Michael (1980).The Game of Tarot. Duckworth. p. 41. ISBN 0 7156 1014 7.
14. Mayer, Leo Ary (1939), Le Bulletin de l'Institut français d'archéologie orientale(http://www.ifao.egnet.net/bifao/38/),
38, pp. 113–118, retrieved 2008-09-08.
15. International Playing Cards Society Journal, 30-3, page 139 (http://www.i-p-c-s.org/publications.html#journal)
16. Pollett, Andrea "The Playing-Card", Vol. 31, No 1 pp. 34–41.
17. Mamluk cards (http://cards.old.no/1500-mamluk/). Cards.old.no. Retrieved on 2015-05-10.
18. Wintle, Simon. Moorish playing cards (http://www.wopc.co.uk/spain/moorish/index)at The World of Playing Cards.
Retrieved 22 July 2015.
19. The Mamluk Cards (http://l-pollett.tripod.com/cards64.htm). L-pollett.tripod.com. Retrieved on 2015-05-10.
20. No trump trick-taking games(http://www.pagat.com/notrump/) at pagat.com
21. Donald Laycock in Skeptical—a Handbook of Pseudoscience and the Paranormal , ed Donald Laycock, David
Vernon, Colin Groves, Simon Brown, Imagecraft, Canberra, 1989,ISBN 0-7316-5794-2, p. 67
22. Andy's Playing Cards - The Tarot And Other Early Cards - page XVII - the moorish deck(http://l-pollett.tripod.com/ca
rds77.htm). L-pollett.tripod.com. Retrieved on 2015-05-10.
23. "Trionfi – Tarot and its history" (http://trionfi.com/0/p/01/). trionfi.co.
24. "Trionfi – Tarot and its history" (http://trionfi.com/0/p/02/). trionfi.co.
25. J. Brunet i Bellet, Lo joch de naibs, naips o cartas, Barcelona, 1886, quote in the"Diccionari de rims de 1371 :
darrerament/per ensajar/de bandejar/los seus guarips/joch de nayps/de nit jugàvem , see also le site trionfi.com (htt
p://trionfi.com/0/p/28/)
26. Banzhaf, Hajo (1994),Il Grande Libro dei Tarocchi (in Italian), Roma: Hermes Edizioni, pp. 16, 192,ISBN 88-7938-
047-8
27. Olmert, Michael (1996).Milton's Teeth and Ovid's Umbrella: Curiouser & Curiouser Adventures in History, p.135.
Simon & Schuster, New York. ISBN 0-684-80164-7.
28. "Early Card painters and Printers in Germany
, Austria and Flandern (14th and 15th century)"(http://trionfi.com/0/p/2
0/). trionfi.com.
29. "The Cloisters Playing Cards, ca. 1475–80"(http://www.metmuseum.org/collection/the-collection-online/search/4755
13?=&imgno=0&tabname=label). Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved 19 May 2015.
30. "Early Playing Cards Research"(http://trionfi.com/0/p/16/). Retrieved 22 September 2014.
31. "The Introduction of Playing-Cards to Europe"(http://jducoeur.org/game-hist/seaan-cardhist.html). jducoeur.org.
32. History of Playing-Cards(http://i-p-c-s.org/history.html) at International Playing-Card Societywebsite
33. Wintle, Simon. Early references to Playing Cards(http://www.wopc.co.uk/history/earlyrefs)at World of Playing
Cards.
34. Barrington, Daines (1787). Archaeologia, or, Miscellaneous tracts relating to antiquity. 8. Society of Antiquaries of
London. p. 141.
35. "knave, n, 2". Oxford English Dictionary(2 ed.). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. 1989.
36. Andy's Playing Cards - Japanese and Korean Cards(http://l-pollett.tripod.com/cards9.htm). L-pollett.tripod.com.
Retrieved on 2015-05-10.
37. International Playing Cards Society Journal30-1 page 34 (http://www.i-p-c-s.org/publications.html#journal)
38. Dawson, Tom and Judy. (2014) Hochman Encyclopedia of American Playing Cards
. 2nd Ed. Ch 5.
39. International Playing Cards Society Journal. XXVII-5 p. 186 (http://www.i-p-c-s.org/publications.html#journal); and
31-1 p. 22
40. Fryxell, David A. (2014-02-07)History Matters: Playing Cards(http://www.familytreemagazine.com/Article/history-ma
tters-playing-cards). Family Tree Magazine.
41. "Playing cards featuring logo of the FJ Holden"(http://www.nma.gov.au/collections-search/display?irn=78990).
National Museum of Australia.
42. Parlett, David (1990), The Oxford Guide to Card Games, Oxford University Press, p. 190, ISBN 0-19-214165-1
43. US Playing Card Co. – A Brief History of Playing Cards(https://web.archive.org/web/20070826144858/http://www
.us
playingcard.com/gamerules/briefhistory.html) (archive.org mirror)
44. Beal, George (1975). Playing cards and their story. New York: Arco Publishing Comoany Inc. p.58
45. Parlett, David (1990), The Oxford Guide to Card Games, Oxford University Press, p. 191, ISBN 0-19-214165-1
46. "Standard pattern notes"(http://i-p-c-s.org/pattern/notes.html). I-p-c-s.org. Retrieved 2015-05-10.
47. Unicode – Playing Cards Block(http://unicode.org/charts/PDF/U1F0A0.pdf)(PDF), retrieved 2014-11-08

Cited sources
Needham, Joseph (2004), Science & Civilisation in China, V:1, Cambridge University Press,ISBN 0-521-05802-3

External links
Playing card societies (collectors and researchers)

International Playing-Card Society

List of local playing card societies worldwide
History of playing cards

Timeline playing card and tarot history (1370- 1800)

Illustrated history of playing cards
Illustrated short history of playing cards
History of playing cards
History of playing cards
Taxes and Tax Stamps on Playing Cards
Short history of playing cards
Playing card iconography

Catalogue of standard playing card patterns used today and in earlier times
Examples of courts on playing cards
Standard and fancy playing cards from around the world
Museums, Institutes and Organisations

Collection of links
Playing card collections online

World Web Playing Cards Museum

British museum
Bibliothèque nationale de France (Gallica)
Yale University, Cary Collection of Playing Cards
Manufacturers

The United States Playing Card Company

Carta Mundi, Belgium
Fournier, Spain
ASS Altenburger Spielkarten, Germany
Ferd. Piatnik & Sons, Austria
Custom made playing cards, India
Designing Playing cards

kickstarter, bringing creative projects to life

Deck of playing cards in XML-based SVG

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