History, Meaning, and Uses of a Deck of Playing Cards
As a result of his mass production, the lavish independent artwork often found on playing cards was replaced by the standardized designs we are most familiar with today. This included the introduction of a double-ended court card that prevented card players from having to turn their hand and expose the fact they were holding a court card during a poker game. Playing cards and card games have a rich and captivating history that spans centuries and continents. From their humble origins in China to their widespread popularity in Europe and beyond, playing cards have evolved and adapted to the changing times.
But such was the demand for packs that cheaper methods of production were called for, and by the early 15th century the Germans had mastered printing with wood blocks. With the hardware easily obtainable, cards became popular among people of all classes. The concept, and the technology to make the paper they are printed on, probably originated in China around the end of the first millennium. During the Tang dynasty of the 9th century AD, a Princess Tongchang is said to have played the “leaf game”.
Jokers
As casinos consume many decks daily, they sometimes resell used cards that were “on the [casino] floor”. The cards sold to the public are altered, either by cutting the deck’s corners or by punching a hole in the deck,[7] to prevent them from being used for cheating in the casino. Card games typically exploit the fact that each player can identify only the cards he holds, not those of his opponents.
This and most of the mentions thereafter are bannings, fulminations against the evils of gambling, or notices of arrest for so doing. First documentary evidence of cards in Spain; in a Catalan rhyming dictionary, of all places. Depending on the mtg decks number, this could be union, satisfaction, new beginnings, success, adjustments, changes, and more. The fortune-teller would look at the number or face along with the suit to determine the meaning of each card, then look at them together as a whole to determine the person’s future. This is something that has been done for many years and is still done today.
Diamonds, by contrast, could have represented the upper class in French decks, as paving stones used in the chancels of churches were diamond shaped, and such stones marked the graves of the aristocratic dead. Today, the public might know how to play blackjack or bridge, but few stop to consider that a deck of cards is a marvel of engineering, design, and history. Cards have served as amusing pastimes, high-stakes gambles, tools of occult practice, magic tricks, and mathematical probability models—even, at times, as currency and as a medium for secret messages. Playing card wrappers are also notable ephemera because cards were one of the early products sold in packaging. Decks of cards were thus one of the first pre-packaged manufactured items.
They were exquisite works of art in their own right; even to the extent that Kings — such as King Charles VI of France — would pay handsome sums to skilled artists to create custom decks for use in court. It is also to the English that we owe the place of honour given to the Ace of Spades, which has its roots in taxation laws. The English government passed an Act that cards could not leave the factory until they had proof that the required tax on playing cards had been paid.
Standardization and the Modern Deck
These cards would show a picture, and sometimes a written clue, and the game was to guess the answer. Poker is a family of gambling games in which players bet into a pool, called the pot, the value of which changes as the game progresses that the value of the hand they carry will beat all others according to the ranking system. Variants largely differ on how cards are dealt and the methods by which players can improve a hand. For many reasons, including its age and its popularity among Western militaries, it is one of the most universally known card games in existence. Hand comparison games, also called comparing card games, are mostly gambling games that use cards.
Custom card decks
And this is when we know that the decks had four suits and 52 cards from more complete, later specimens. Interestingly, the first records of playing cards in Europe date to the 1360s and 70s, in mentions of banning card games by the cities of Bern and Florence. In fact, many of the earliest references to playing cards in Europe come from sermons and religious texts condemning their use for gambling. The earliest cards were made by hand, often with woodcut prints, and hand-painted, making them luxury items only for the elite – the same thing I found when looking into the History of Jigsaw Puzzles.
They are easier to learn but must be repeated more to sufficiently randomize the deck. A method suitable for small children consists in spreading the cards on a large surface and moving them around before picking up the deck again. This is also the most common method for shuffling tiles such as dominoes.
Playing cards have a rich and fascinating history that spans centuries, with their origins believed to date back to ancient China and Egypt. Wikipedia leans toward the theory that the playing cards were invented in China, during the Tang Dynasty. We all gathered around the table, clutching that deck of well-worn cards like it’s the key to another universe.
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 is used to play piquet, belote, bezique and skat. Values in Russian 36-card stripped deck (used to play durak and many other traditional games) range from 6 to 10.
Researchers, especially Dummett (who’s sort of a legend in the community of playing card scholars), have made it a point to demysticize tarot decks. Tarot games are annoyingly complicated trump games, sort of like bridge. The occult cartomancy trend dates only to the late 1700s, created by a French pastor who believed (totally incorrectly but very seriously) that the cards were a compendium of ancient Egyptian wisdom passed down by Thoth, the Egyptian god of knowledge. This pastor provided zero documentation of his beliefs, and scholars are pretty convinced there’s no truth to them, which makes using tarot cards for divination a little bit like trying to see the future with a pack of Uno cards. Cards have been printed with fine art, such as the 1976 JPL Gallery’s commemoration of modern British artists, and low art as in the cards printed with naked women that have been popular since the days of miners and cowboys in America’s old west. Governments and police departments around the world have made cards with photos of the victims of cold cases or missing persons to draw attention to the crimes.
They originated in the old European games of Thirty-One and Commerce. The object of a matching (or sometimes “melding”) game is to acquire particular groups of matching cards before an opponent can do so. In Rummy, this is done through drawing and discarding, and the groups are called melds.