playing card
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The avatara and ten of
Parashurama, round, painted ivory Indian cards, probably
from the Deccan, 18th century.
By courtesy of the Deutsches Spielkarten Museum, Bielefeld,
Ger.
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one of a set of cards that are numbered or illustrated (or both)
and are used for playing games, for education, for divination,
and for conjuring. Modern cards are divided into four
suits--spades, hearts, diamonds, and clubs, symbolized
respectively as follows:
There
are 13 cards in each of the four suits. The set of 52 cards
together is known variously as the pack or the deck. Two jokers,
bearing the image of a medieval court jester, are usually
included with the standard 52-card deck, although they are not
always used in play.
Though
where and when cards originated is uncertain, China seems the
most likely place, and the 7th to the 10th century the earliest
probable time. An Indian origin has been suggested by the
resemblance of symbols on some early European decks to the ring,
sword, cup, and baton classically depicted in the four hands of
Hindu statues. Yet another theory is that both cards and chess
are derived from ancient divinatory procedures used by primitive
peoples.
Nor
is it known how cards were introduced to Europe. Some early
decks had symbols resembling the Chinese markings and may have
been taken back by a Venetian, possibly Niccolò Polo or his
more famous son, Marco, during travels to and from China in the
latter half of the 13th century. Another speculation is that
cards may have been brought from Arabia by the Gypsies, but the
Gypsies did not reach western Europe in appreciable numbers
until after cards had become firmly established. If an Arab
origin is to be sought, the Saracen invasion of Sicily or the
Moorish conquest of Spain could provide a link. The Spanish word
for cards, which is naipes, and an earlier Italian word,
which is naibi, are probably of Arab origin.
There
are references to cards in Italy from 1299; in Spain, from as
early as 1371; in the Low Countries, from 1379; and in Germany,
from 1380. A French manuscript of the early 14th century
contains a reference to cards, and in 1392 the registers of the
Chambre des Comptes of Charles VI recorded
the purchase of three games of cards "in gold and diverse
colours." In England by 1465 the use of cards was well
enough established for manufacturers to petition for protection
against imports.
Cards
may have first reached the Americas with Columbus, and they
became firmly established there with the arrival of the English,
French, and Dutch colonists. Cards are now played throughout the
world.
The
52-card French deck, now standard throughout the world, evolved
from the numbered cards of the Tarot
deck. The deck, in usual descending order of rank, consists of
an ace, king, queen, jack (formerly knave), and nine numerals
(10 to 2) in each of four suits. A German deck of 32 cards and a
Spanish deck of 40 also evolved, but modern games requiring a
short deck are usually played by removing cards from a standard
deck.
The
suits had different names and often different symbols in the
various countries. The English adopted the French symbols: the
French pique ("pike") looked like a spade to
the English; the carreau ("square") became the
English diamond, the trèfle ("trefoil") became
the English club, and the coeur ("heart")
remained heart. The spread of games such as Whist and Piquet,
and later Contract Bridge, made the 52-card deck current among
card players throughout the world.
The
making of cards has been closely linked with the development of printing.
The earliest cards were hand-painted, but it would appear that
German production in the 15th century almost certainly was so
large as to mean that wood-block
printing must have been employed. German cardmakers may, in
fact, have been the first wood-block engravers in Europe.
The
great diversity of early decks gradually lessened, influenced by
15th-century French exporters, whose simple designs became
widely popular. Modern variations of those designs may be found
primarily in the design of the court cards (kings, queens, and
jacks); those in English decks, for instance, show figures
dressed in the style of Henry VII. The traditional superstition
of gamblers and the more modern tendency to preserve fragments
of the past have tended to prevent change, including official
attempts in some countries to provide proletarian substitutes
for the court cards.
The
standard modern card measures about 2 1/2
 3 1/2
inches (6 9 cm) and
is doubleheaded to aid recognition, with indices at two opposite
corners. The backs are printed with identical designs, patterns,
or pictures. A full deck, including two jokers, is printed on
pasteboard consisting of two sheets gummed together with black
paste to ensure opaqueness. The spades and clubs normally are
printed in black, the hearts and diamonds in red. Each card is
stamped out with a die and simultaneously given a knife edge;
sometimes the edges are lacquered. Almost invariably the
manufacturer's seal is affixed to the wrapped deck.
Governments
have often found cards to be a useful source of revenue. In 1615
James I of England granted letters patent for a duty on imports,
and in 1628 Charles I taxed
manufacturers at a rate gradually increased to the considerable
sum of half-a-crown per pack. After 1765 the tax paid was shown
in the design of the ace of spades, printed officially by the
commissioner of stamps. The heavy impost caused a boom in
second-hand sales and a traffic in forged aces of spades, but
since 1862 the tax has been moderate. In some countries,
however, manufacture is a state monopoly. The high taxes imposed
in Austria led to the printing of oversized cards, which were
trimmed and cleaned when their edges became soiled. High taxes
also encouraged the invention in the 1930s of playing cards
printed on plastic, which far outlasted those printed on
pasteboard.
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Costume
Cards
Many
interesting and unusual card decks were designed in 18th
and 19th century Europe. Cards were made in different
sizes, colors, and even different shapes.
THE
BETTMANN ARCHIVE
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nonstandard
playing cards
Nonstandard
playing-card decks abounded in Europe from the 17th to the 19th
century. In England, from about 1670 to about 1720, a series of
historical playing cards was issued. They were engraved with
intricate comic-strip drawings, each depicting a significant event
relating to the title of the deck. About 15 such decks were
designed, among them "The Knavery of the Rump," satirizing
the Rump Parliament of Oliver Cromwell, "The Reign of Queen
Anne," and "Marlborough's Victories." Many beautiful
decks of cards were made in 18th- and 19th-century France. Of great
interest are the revolutionary decks, which, instead of kings and
queens, had cards representing "citizens," and the
exquisitely hand-colored costume cards, dating from the mid-19th
century. The court cards of these latter decks represented actual
people, dressed in the sumptuous costumes of the period.
Perhaps
the most intriguing of all decks of cards, however, is the
transformation deck. In the early 19th century, when no indices were
yet used on cards, people would amuse themselves by trying to create
drawings based on the pips, or suit symbols, on the cards. The term
transformation refers to changing a plain card to a work of art.
About 75 such decks were printed.
card games
Recorded evidence of the existence of playing cards--usually
in the form of ordinances prohibiting their use--does not appear
in Europe until the 14th century. (The varieties of Chinese and
Indian cards are far older.) Tarot
cards were the first type to appear in the Western world.
Neither the origin of the tarot deck, nor its original purpose,
is known with certainty. The popular belief that the deck was
devised for fortune-telling is denied by many scholars.
Designed in the
Middle
Ages, the tarot deck reflected medieval society, where kings
ruled a world that was divided into four broad classes: the
church, the military, merchants, and farmers. Thus, in addition
to the cards of the major arcana--the symbolic picture cards for
which the tarot deck is still famous--the deck included 56 cards
divided into four suits: cups (the church); swords (the
military); pentacles, or 5-pointed stars (merchants); and batons
(farmers).
These first decks were made by hand, and only the wealthy
could afford them. When the printing press was invented in the
15th century, cards were reproduced by means of hand-colored
woodcuts and, later, engravings. Their popularity spread rapidly
across the continent. The old tarot cups soon became hearts, the
swords became spades, the pentacles became diamonds, and the
batons, clubs. In Germany, however, hearts, leaves, acorns, and
bells illustrated the four suits.
The French had the greatest influence on the creation of the
modern deck. They eliminated the major arcana and combined the
knight and page, reducing the size of the deck to 52 cards and
simplifying the suit symbols to plain red hearts and diamonds,
black spades and trefoils (clover leaves). This simplification
allowed the deck to be more easily printed and lowered its cost.
The French also began to identify the court cards. The king of
hearts was Charlemagne,
for example; of diamonds, Julius Caesar;
of spades, King David;
and of clubs, Alexander
the Great.
Card designs remained basically the same until the mid-19th
century. Double-headed court cards, and indices--the small
suit-number identification in the card corners--were both
innovations of the 1800s. Card backs were usually plain until
the 1850s, when the English artist Owen Jones designed a number
of ornate backs. Complex back designs then began to be printed
on most decks. The first joker appeared in 1865 in an American
deck.
Although early card makers often signed their products, the
inventors of card games remain anonymous. From the 17th century
on, innumerable books on "gaming" accompanied the
card-playing fever that had developed with the increasing
availability of cards. The first accurate compendiums of rules,
however, were those of the English writer Edmond Hoyle,
in his treatise on whist (1742) and his later works on other
games. His books became immensely popular, and the expression
"according to Hoyle" still means to play strictly by
the rules.
Most card games can be classified according to their basic
structure. Games of rank include the various tarot games and the
many games based on the old game of triomphe (triumph in
England), a trump-card game that evolved into the German skat,
as well as whist, euchre,
ecarte, and bridge.
These games are usually played with three or four players, each
bidding for the opportunity to play out their hand by specifying
the number of tricks (one trick being the cards played in one
round) the hand may be able to take. Tricks are taken by the
cards of highest rank. The trump suit outranks all other suits.
Games of combination can be divided into two types. The first
are those which require combinations of sets (3 or 4 cards of a
kind) or groups (3 or more cards in sequence). The second are
those which require groups of cards that add up to a
predetermined score. Poker
and all games fall into the first group. The second group includes
cribbage
and games such as casino
and blackjack.
In some games, where both combination and rank are important,
the object is to score combinations and also to win points by
rank. Bezique,
a 19th-century French game, was the forerunner of ,
several versions of which are widely played in the United
States. The primary object of such games is to
"meld"--to declare certain cards or combinations that
are each worth points--and then to take tricks using both cards
of ranked value and trump cards.
In solitaires,
games played by one person, all the cards in the deck must be
brought into a predetermined order according to certain rules.
There are at least 350 solitaire versions; some can be played
with two or more players.
The most popular card games in gambling casinos are blackjack
and its variants. These are also known as banking games, because
the casino's dealer opposes all other players and controls the
deal and the "bank." Blackjack (vingt-et-un) is the
generic casino game. It requires players to ask for cards one at
a time until they reach a total of 21 or a number as close as
possible to but less than 21. Baccarat
and chemin
de fer are similar, except that only two or three cards are
dealt, and the winning number is 9.
Another large category of card games are those played by
children. Many involve simply collecting combinations
("Have you any threes?" "Go Fish"--whereupon
the first player takes a card from the pile of undealt cards) or
being quicker to slap or cover a card (Slapjack, Spit). Some
children's games, however, are fairly complex (Concentration,
Cuckoo, Frogs in the Pond). Special decks of cards designed to
teach (for example, Authors, which features pictures of famous
writers; or Geography, with maps of continents and countries)
have also been popular.
Margery B. Griffith
Bibliography: Consumer Guide Staff, All
Time Favorite Card Games (1997); Diagram Group Staff, The
Little Giant Encyclopedia of Card Games (1995); Duncan, D., Best
American Card Games (1995); Morehead, A. L., ed., Official
Rules of Card Games (1978; repr. 1996); Parlett, D., A
Dictionary of Card Games (1992) and Oxford Guide to Card
Games (1990); Scarne, J., Scarne's Encyclopedia of Card
Games (1983; repr. 1995); Walker, B. G., The Secrets of
the Tarot: Origins, History, and Symbolism (1984); Wood, B.
H., and Ings, F. R., Popular Card Games (1994); Wowk, K.,
Playing Cards of the World (1982), Microsoft
Encarta Encyclopedia
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