Poker
Article
Talk
Read
Edit
View history
Tools
Page protected with pending changes
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
For other uses, see Poker (disambiguation).
"Poker player" redirects here. For the magazine, see Poker Player.
A game of Texas hold 'em in progress. "Hold 'em" is a popular form of poker.
Poker is a family of comparing card games in which players wager over which hand is best according to that specific game's rules. It is played worldwide, but in some places the rules may vary. While the earliest known form of the game was played with just 20 cards, today it is usually played with a standard deck, although in countries where short packs are common, it may be played with 32, 40 or 48 cards.[1] Thus poker games vary in deck configuration, the number of cards in play, the number dealt face up or face down, and the number shared by all players, but all have rules that involve one or more rounds of betting.
In most modern poker games, the first round of betting begins with one or more of the players making some form of a forced bet (the blind or ante). In standard poker, each player bets according to the rank they believe their hand is worth as compared to the other players. The action then proceeds clockwise as each player in turn must either match (or "call") the maximum previous bet, or fold, losing the amount bet so far and all further involvement in the hand. A player who matches a bet may also "raise" (increase) the bet. The betting round ends when all players have either called the last bet or folded. If all but one player folds on any round, the remaining player collects the pot without being required to reveal their hand. If more than one player remains in contention after the final betting round, a showdown takes place where the hands are revealed, and the player with the winning hand takes the pot.
With the exception of initial forced bets, money is only placed into the pot voluntarily by a player who either believes the bet has a positive expected value or who is trying to bluff other players for various strategic reasons. Thus, while the outcome of any particular hand significantly involves chance, the long-run expectations of the players are determined by their actions chosen on the basis of probability, psychology, and game theory.
Poker has increased in popularity since the beginning of the 20th century and has gone from being primarily a recreational activity confined to small groups of enthusiasts to a widely popular activity, both for participants and spectators, including online, with many professional players and multimillion-dollar tournament prizes.[2]
History
This article should include a better summary of History of poker. See Wikipedia:Summary style for information on how to properly incorporate it into this article's main text. (April 2018)
Main article: History of poker
While poker's exact origin is the subject of debate, many game scholars point to the French game Poque and the Persian game As-Nas as possible early inspirations.[3] For example, in the 1937 edition of Foster's Complete Hoyle, R. F. Foster wrote that "the game of poker, as first played in the United States, five cards to each player from a twenty-card pack, is undoubtedly the Persian game of As-Nas." However, in the 1990s the notion that poker is a direct derivative of As-Nas began to be challenged by gaming historians including David Parlett. What is certain, however, is that poker was popularized in the American South in the early 19th century, as gambling riverboats in the Mississippi River and around New Orleans during the 1830s helped spread the game. One early description of poker was played on a steamboat in 1829 is recorded by the English actor, Joe Cowell. The game was played with twenty cards ranking from Ace (high) to Ten (low).[4]
In contrast to this version of poker, seven-card stud only appeared in the middle of the 19th century, and was largely spread by the US military.[5] It became a staple in many casinos following the second world war, and grew in popularity with the advent of the World Series of Poker in the 1970s.[6]
Texas hold 'em and other community card games began to dominate the gambling scenes over the next couple of decades. The televising of poker was a particularly strong influence increasing the popularity of the game during the turn of the millennium, resulting in the poker boom a few years later between 2003 and 2006. Today the game has grown to become an extremely popular pastime worldwide.
Gameplay
Further information on betting rules: Betting in poker
For more details on rules for the most common poker variants, see List of poker hands and List of poker variants.
Straight flush
Jack of clubs10 of clubs9 of clubs8 of clubs7 of clubs
Four of a kind
6 of clubs6 of diamonds6 of hearts6 of spadesAce of clubs
Examples of top poker hand categories
In casual play, the right to deal a hand typically rotates among the players and is marked by a token called a dealer button (or buck). In a casino, a house dealer handles the cards for each hand, but the button (typically a white plastic disk) is rotated clockwise among the players to indicate a nominal dealer to determine the order of betting. The cards are dealt clockwise around the poker table, one at a time.
One or more players are usually required to make forced bets, usually either an ante or a blind bet (sometimes both). The dealer shuffles the cards, the player on the chair to their right cuts, and the dealer deals the appropriate number of cards to the players one at a time, beginning with the player to their left. Cards may be dealt either face-up or face-down, depending on the variant of poker being played. After the initial deal, the first of what may be several betting rounds begins. Between rounds, the players' hands develop in some way, often by being dealt additional cards or replacing cards previously dealt. At the end of each round, all bets are gathered into the central pot.
At any time during a betting round, if one player bets, no opponents choose to call (match) the bet, and all opponents instead fold, the hand ends immediately, the bettor is awarded the pot, no cards are required to be shown, and the next hand begins. This is what makes bluffing possible. Bluffing is a primary feature of poker, distinguishing it from other vying games and from other games that use poker hand rankings.
At the end of the last betting round, if more than one player remains, there is a showdown, in which the players reveal their previously hidden cards and evaluate their hands. The player with the best hand according to the poker variant being played wins the pot. A poker hand comprises five cards; in variants where a player has more than five cards available to them, only the best five-card combination counts. There are 10 different kinds of poker hands, such as straight flush and four of a kind.
Variants
Main article: List of poker variants
2006 WSOP Main Event table
Poker has many variations,[7][8] all following a similar pattern of play[9] and generally using the same hand ranking hierarchy. There are four main families of variants, largely grouped by the protocol of card-dealing and betting:
Straight
A complete hand is dealt to each player, and players bet in one round, with raising and re-raising allowed. This is the oldest poker family; the root of the game as now played was a game known as Primero, which evolved into the game three-card brag, a very popular gentleman's game around the time of the American Revolutionary War and still enjoyed in the U.K. today. Straight hands of five cards are sometimes used as a final showdown, but poker is almost always played in a more complex form to allow for additional strategy.
Stud poker
Cards are dealt in a prearranged combination of face-down and face-up rounds, or streets, with a round of betting following each. This is the next-oldest family; as poker progressed from three to five-card hands, they were often dealt one card at a time, either face-down or face-up, with a betting round between each. The most popular stud variant today, seven-card stud, deals two extra cards to each player (three face-down, four face-up) from which they must make the best possible 5-card hand.
Draw poker
Five-card draw: A complete hand is dealt to each player, face-down. Then each player must place an ante to the pot. They can then see their cards and bet accordingly. After betting, players can discard up to three cards and take new ones from the top of the deck. Then, another round of betting takes place. Finally, each player must show their cards and the player with the best hand wins.
Community card poker
Also known as "flop poker," community card poker is a variation of stud poker. Players are dealt an incomplete hand of face-down cards, and then a number of face-up community cards are dealt to the center of the table, each of which can be used by one or more of the players to make a 5-card hand. Texas hold 'em and Omaha are two well-known variants of the community card family.
There are several methods for defining the structure of betting during a hand of poker. The three most common structures are known as "fixed-limit," "pot-limit," and "no-limit." In fixed-limit poker, betting and raising must be done by standardized amounts. For instance, if the required bet is X, an initial bettor may only bet X; if a player wishes to raise a bet, they may only raise by X. In pot-limit poker, a player may bet or raise any amount up to the size of the pot. When calculating the maximum raise allowed, all previous bets and calls, including the intending raiser's call, are first added to the pot. The raiser may then raise the previous bet by the full amount of the pot. In no-limit poker, a player may wager their entire betting stack at any point that they are allowed to make a bet. In all games, if a player does not have enough betting chips to fully match a bet, they may go "all-in," allowing them to show down their hand for the number of chips they have remaining.
James Garner as fictional poker player Bret Maverick and Jack Kelly as his brother Bart Maverick from the 1957 television series Maverick
While typical poker games award the pot to the highest hand as per the standard ranking of poker hands, there are variations where the best hand, and thus the hand awarded the pot, is the lowest-ranked hand instead. In such games the best hand contains the lowest cards rather than the highest cards; some variations may be further complicated by whether or not hands such as flushes and straights are considered in the hand rankings. There are also games where the highest and lowest hands divide the pot between them, known as "high low split" games.
Other games that use poker hand rankings may likewise be referred to as poker. Video poker is a single-player video game that functions much like a slot machine; most video poker machines play draw poker, where the player bets, a hand is dealt, and the player can discard and replace cards. Payout is dependent on the hand resulting after the draw and the player's initial bet.
Strip poker is a traditional poker variation where players remove clothing when they lose bets. Since it depends only on the basic mechanic of betting in rounds, strip poker can be played with any form of poker; however, it is usually based on simple variants with few betting rounds, like five card draw.
Another game with the poker name, but with a vastly different mode of play, is called Acey-Deucey or Red Dog poker. This game is more similar to Blackjack in its layout and betting; each player bets against the house, and then is dealt two cards. For the player to win, the third card dealt (after an opportunity to raise the bet) must have a value in-between the first two. Payout is based on the odds that this is possible, based on the difference in values of the first two cards. Other poker-like games played at casinos against the house include three card poker and pai gow poker.
Computer programs
A variety of computer poker players have been developed by researchers at the University of Alberta, Carnegie Mellon University, and the University of Auckland amongst others.
In a January 2015 article[10] published in Science, a group of researchers mostly from the University of Alberta announced that they "essentially weakly solved" heads-up limit Texas Hold 'em with their development of their Cepheus poker bot. The authors claimed that Cepheus would lose at most 0.001 big blinds per game on average against its worst-case opponent, and the strategy is thus so "close to optimal" that "it can't be beaten with statistical significance within a lifetime of human poker playing."[11]
See also
icon Games portal
Glossary of poker terms
List of poker hands
Online poker
Outline of poker
Underground poker
References
Parlett (2008), pp. 568–570.
"Top 10 moments in poker history". casinocitytimes.com. Retrieved 2021-02-24.
"History of Poker" in Roya, Will (2021). Card Night: Classic Games, Classic Decks, and the History Behind Them. Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers. p. 203. ISBN 9780762473519.
Cowell (1844), p. 94.
"History of Poker" in Roya, Will (2021). Card Night: Classic Games, Classic Decks, and the History Behind Them. Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers. p. 203. ISBN 9780762473519.
"World Series of Poker Retrospective: Horseshoe History". gaming.unlv.edu. Retrieved 2019-01-13.
Richard D. Harroch, Lou Krieger. Poker for Dummies. John Wiley & Sons, 2010
Reuben, Stewart 2001. Starting out in Poker. London: Everyman/Mind Sports. ISBN 1-85744-272-5
Sklansky, David. The Theory of Poker. Two Plus Two Pub, 1999.
Bowling, M.; Burch, N.; Johanson, M.; Tammelin, O. (2015). "Heads-up limit hold'em poker is solved" (PDF). Science. 347 (6218): 145–149. Bibcode:2015Sci...347..145B. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.697.72. doi:10.1126/science.1259433. PMID 25574016. S2CID 3796371. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2015-01-22.
Gill, Victoria (2015-01-08). "Computer program 'perfect at poker'". BBC News. Retrieved 2022-02-10.
Literature
Parlett, David (2008), The Penguin Book of Card Games, London: Penguin, ISBN 978-0-141-03787-5
External links
Wikibooks has a book on the topic of: poker
Wikiquote has quotations related to Poker.
Look up poker in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Poker.
Poker at Curlie
vte
Poker
Index of poker articles
Overview
BettingCheatingGlossaryHistory Poker boomTournaments
Play
Elements
ChipPositionPotPlaying cardHands Non-standardTell
Plays
AggressionBluffCheck-raiseDrawIsolationProtectionSteal
Variations
BragDraw poker Five-card drawStud poker Five-card studSeven-card studRazzCommunity card poker Texas hold 'emGreek hold 'emOmaha hold 'emSix-plus hold 'emCasino games Caribbean studLet It RideMississippi StudThree Card PokerFour Card PokerChinese poker Open-face Chinese poker
Strategy
Fundamental theorem of pokerMorton's theoremPot oddsSlow play
Computing
Computer poker playerOnline pokerPoker tools
Category Commons Outline
vte
Gambling
Gambling terminology
Venues
Casino ListOnline casinoCardroomRacinoRiverboat casino
Science
Mathematics
Gambling mathematicsMathematics of bookmakingPoker probability
Strategies
Advantage gambling Card countingDice controlAsian handicapDue Column bettingLabouchère systemMartingale
By region
Africa
AngolaNigeriaSouth Africa
Asia
CambodiaChina Hong KongMacauIndiaJapanPakistanPhilippines ManilaRussiaSingaporeTaiwanThailandTurkeyVietnam
Europe
EstoniaFranceItalyNorwayRussiaTurkeyUkraineUnited Kingdom
North America
MexicoUnited StatesCanada QuebecOntarioBCWestern CanadaAtlantic Canada
Oceania
AustraliaNew Zealand
South America
Brazil
Games
Casino gameGame of chanceGame of skillList of bets
Issues
Gaming lawProblem gambling
Category Commons Wiktionary WikiProject
Authority control databases: National Edit this at Wikidata
FranceBnF dataGermanyIsraelUnited StatesCzech Republic
Categories: Poker19th-century card gamesAmerican card gamesGambling gamesGames of mental skillMultiplayer gamesAmerican inventions
Playing card
Article
Talk
Read
Edit
View history
Tools
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Playing cards)
For other uses, including specific playing cards, see Playing card (disambiguation).
Hand of French-suited cards
Tarot playing cards from Austria
Suit of Bells from a Bavarian pack
A playing card is a piece of specially prepared card stock, heavy paper, thin cardboard, plastic-coated paper, cotton-paper blend, or thin plastic that is marked with distinguishing motifs. Often the front (face) and back of each card has a finish to make handling easier. They are most commonly used for playing card games, and are also used in magic tricks, cardistry,[1][2] card throwing,[3] and card houses; cards may also be collected.[4] Playing cards are typically palm-sized for convenient handling, and usually are sold together in a set as a deck of cards or pack of cards.
The most common type of playing card in the West is the French-suited, standard 52-card pack, of which the most widespread design is the English pattern,[a] followed by the Belgian-Genoese pattern.[5] However, many countries use other, traditional types of playing card, including those that are German, Italian, Spanish and Swiss-suited. Tarot cards (also known locally as Tarocks or tarocchi) are an old genre of playing card that is still very popular in France, central and Eastern Europe and Italy. Customised Tarot card decks are also used for divination; including tarot card reading and cartomancy.[6] Asia, too, has regional cards such as the Japanese hanafuda. The reverse side of the card is often covered with a pattern that will make it difficult for players to look through the translucent material to read other people's cards or to identify cards by minor scratches or marks on their backs.
Playing cards are available in a wide variety of styles, as decks may be custom-produced for competitions, casinos[7] and magicians[8] (sometimes in the form of trick decks),[9] made as promotional items,[10] or intended as souvenirs,[11][12] artistic works, educational tools,[13][14][15] or branded accessories.[16] Decks of cards or even single cards are also collected as a hobby or for monetary value.[17][18]
China
Chinese printed playing card c. 1400 AD found near Turpan
Further information: Chinese playing cards
Playing cards were probably invented during the Tang dynasty around the 9th century AD as a result of the usage of woodblock printing technology.[19][20][21][22][23] The reference to a leaf game in a 9th century text known as the Collection of Miscellanea at Duyang (Chinese: 杜阳杂编; pinyin: Dùyáng zábiān), written by Tang dynasty writer Su E, is often cited in connection to the existence of playing cards. However the connection between playing cards and the leaf game is disputed.[24][25][26][27] The reference describes Princess Tongchang, daughter of Emperor Yizong of Tang, playing the "leaf game" in 868 with members of the Wei clan, the family of the princess's husband.[21][28][29] The first known book on the "leaf" game was called the Yezi Gexi and allegedly written by a Tang woman. It received commentary by writers of subsequent dynasties.[30] 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 sheets as a writing medium.[21][30] However, Ouyang also claims that the "leaves" were pages of a book used in a board game played with dice, and that the rules of the game were lost by 1067.[31]
Other games revolving around alcoholic drinking involved using playing cards of a sort from the Tang dynasty onward. However, these cards did not contain suits or numbers. Instead, they were printed with instructions or forfeits for whoever drew them.[31]
The earliest dated instance of a game involving cards occurred on 17 July 1294 when the Ming Department of Punishments caught two gamblers, Yan Sengzhu and Zheng Pig-Dog, playing with paper cards. Wood blocks for printing the cards were impounded, together with nine of the actual cards.[31]
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,[20] 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). 15th-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[32] with Chinese 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.[33]
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 the court 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 earlier deck which consisted of 48 cards divided into four suits each with ten pip cards and two court cards.[34]
Egypt
Four Mamluk playing cards
By the 11th century, playing cards were spreading throughout the Asian continent and later came into Egypt.[35] The oldest surviving cards in the world are four fragments found in the Keir Collection and one in the Benaki Museum, but it is uncertain for sure if these were actual playing cards or simply scraps of parchment that sort of look like playing cards. They are dated to the 12th and 13th centuries (late Fatimid, Ayyubid, and early Mamluk periods).[36][37]
A near complete pack of Mamluk 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.[38] It is not a complete set and is actually composed of three different packs, probably to replace missing cards.[39] The 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" (10,000) in the Turkic, Mongolian and Jurchen languages.[40] Wilkinson postulated that the cups may have been derived from inverting the Chinese and Jurchen ideogram for "myriad", 万, which was pronounced as something like man in Middle Chinese.
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 like ombre, tarot, and maw.[41]
A fragment of two uncut sheets of Moorish-styled cards of a similar but plainer style was found in Spain and dated to the early 15th century.[42]
Export of these cards (from Cairo, Alexandria, and Damascus), ceased after the fall of the Mamluks in the 16th century.[43] The rules to play these games are lost but they are believed to be plain trick games without trumps.[44]
Spread across Europe and early design changes
Further information: Tarot
Knave of Coins from the oldest known European deck (c. 1390–1410)
Card players in 18th Century Venice, by Pietro Longhi
Playing cards probably came to Europe from the East, specifically those used by the Mamluks in Egypt. The cards arrived first either in Italy or Spain. Historical evidence is inconclusive as to which, however the Italian-suited cards are closest in appearance to the Mamluk cards and the Spanish design appears to be simplification. The polo sticks depicted in one of the suits used by the Mamluks were modified by the Italians into ceremonial batons; these were changed in the Spanish design to wooden clubs.[45]
The earliest European mention of playing cards appears in 1371 in a Catalan language rhyme dictionary which lists naip among words ending in -ip. According to Denning, the only attested meaning of this Catalan word is "playing card".[46] This suggests that cards may have been "reasonably well known" in Catalonia (now part of Spain) at that time, perhaps introduced as a result of maritime trade with the Mamluk rulers of Egypt.[47]
The earliest record of playing cards in central Europe is believed by some researchers to be a ban on card games in the city of Bern in 1367,[48][49] but this source is disputed as the earliest copy available dates to 1398 and may have been amended.[50][51][52] Generally accepted as the first Italian reference is a Florentine ban dating to 1377.[48][50][53] Also appearing in 1377 was the treatise by John of Rheinfelden, in which he describes playing cards and their moral meaning.[54] From this year onwards more and more records (usually bans) of playing cards occur,[55][51] first appearing in England as early as 1413.[56]
Among the early patterns of playing card were those derived from the Mamluk suits of cups, coins, swords, and polo sticks, which are still used in traditional Latin decks.[57] As polo was an obscure sport to Europeans then, the polo-sticks became batons or cudgels.[58] In addition to Catalonia in 1371, the presence of playing cards is attested in 1377 in Switzerland, and 1380 in many locations including Florence and Paris.[59][60][61] Wide use of playing cards in Europe can, with some certainty, be traced from 1377 onward.[62]
In the account books of Johanna, Duchess of Brabant and Wenceslaus I, Duke of Luxembourg, an entry dated May 14, 1379, by receiver general of Brabant Renier Hollander reads: "Given to Monsieur and Madame four peters and two florins, worth eight and a half sheep, for the purchase of packs of cards".[63] 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.[64]
From about 1418 to 1450[65] professional card makers in Ulm, Nuremberg, and Augsburg created printed decks. Playing cards even competed with devotional images as the most common uses for woodcuts 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 Flemish Hunting Deck, held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, is the oldest complete set of ordinary playing cards made in Europe from the 15th century.[66]
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. France initially used Latin-suited cards and the Aluette pack used today in western France may be a relic of that time, but around 1480, French card manufacturers, perhaps in order to facilitate mass production, went over to very much simplified versions of the German suit symbols. 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.[67] In England, the French suits were eventually used, although the earliest packs circulating may have had Latin suits.[68] This may account for 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.[69][70] The latter two correspond with the Ober and Unter cards still found today 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.[71][72] 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.
In 1628, the Mistery of Makers of Playing Cards of the City of London (now the Worshipful Company of Makers of Playing Cards) was incorporated under a royal charter by Charles I; the Company received livery status from the Court of Aldermen of the City of London in 1792.[73] The Company still exists today, having expanded its member ranks to include "card makers... card collectors, dealers, bridge players, [and] magicians".[74]
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.[75]
Later design changes
An early Joker by Samuel Hart, c. 1863
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,[76] but this feature was commonly used only from the end of the 18th century. The first American-manufactured (French) 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.[4]
Girl with Cards by Lucius Kutchin, 1933, Smithsonian American Art Museum
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 French pack with this design was printed around 1802 by Thomas Wheeler.[77]
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 to have designs, pictures, photos, or advertising on the reverse.[78][79]
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.[80] The name of the card is believed to derive from juker, a variant name for euchre.[81][82] The earliest reference to a joker functioning as a wild card dates to 1875 with a variation of poker.[83]
Research
Columbia University's Rare Book and Manuscript Library holds the Albert Field Collection of Playing Cards, an archive of over 6,000 individual decks from over 50 countries and dating back to the 1550s.[14] In 2018 the university digitized over 100 of its decks.[84]
Since 2017, Vanderbilt University has been home to the 1,000-volume George Clulow and United States Playing Card Co. Gaming Collection, which has been called one of the "most complete and scholarly collections [of books on cards and gaming] that has ever been gathered together".[85]
Modern formats
Main article: List of traditional card and tile packs
See also: Playing card suit
International playing card suits
French Hearts
Diamonds
Clubs
Spades
German Hearts
Bells
Acorns
Leaves
Italian Cups
Coins
Clubs
Swords
Spanish Cups
Coins
Clubs
Swords
Swiss-German Roses
Bells
Acorns
Shields
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 these patterns are in the public domain, this allows multiple card manufacturers to recreate them.[86] 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 its 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, the ace of clubs in France or the ace of coins in Italy are also collectible as that is where the manufacturer's logo is usually placed.
Typically, playing cards have indices printed in the upper-left and lower-right corners. While this design does not restrict which hand players hold their cards, some left-handed players may prefer to fan their cards in the opposite direction. Some designs exist with indices in all four corners.[87][88]
French-suited decks
Main article: French playing cards
52 French playing cards with jokers
French decks come in a variety of patterns and deck sizes. The 52-card deck is the most popular deck and includes 13 ranks of each suit with reversible "court" or face cards. Each suit includes an ace, depicting a single symbol of its suit, a king, queen, and jack, each depicted with a symbol of their suit; and ranks two through ten, with each card depicting that number of pips of its suit. As well as these 52 cards, commercial packs often include between one and six jokers, most often two.
Decks with fewer than 52 cards are known as stripped decks. 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. It is also used in the Sri Lankan, whist-based game known as omi. 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 play Schnapsen.
A pinochle deck consists of two copies of a 24-card schnapsen deck, thus 48 cards.
The 78-card Tarot Nouveau adds the knight card between queens and jacks along with 21 numbered trumps and the unnumbered Fool.
Manufacturing
The Spielkartenfabrik Altenburg playing card factory in Altenburg, Germany, June 2013
Today the process of making playing cards is highly automated. Large sheets of paper are glued together to create a sheet of pasteboard; the glue may be black or dyed another dark color to increase the card stock's opacity. In the industry, this black compound is sometimes known as "gick".[citation needed] Some card manufacturers may purchase pasteboard from various suppliers; large companies such as USPCC create their own proprietary pasteboard. After the desired imagery is etched into printing plates, the art is printed onto each side of the pasteboard sheet, which is coated with a textured or smooth finish, sometimes called a varnish or paint coating. These coatings can be water- or solvent-based, and different textures and visual effects can be achieved by adding certain dyes or foils, or using multiple varnish processes.[89]
The pasteboard is then split into individual uncut sheets, which are cut into single cards and sorted into decks.[90] The corners are then rounded, after which the decks are packaged, commonly in tuck boxes wrapped in cellophane. The tuck box may have a seal applied.[91][92]
Card manufacturers must pay special attention to the registration of the cards, as non-symmetrical cards can be used to cheat.[93][7]
Non-standard design and use
Casinos
Waterproof playing cards made from clear plastic.
Gambling corporations commonly have playing cards made specifically for their casinos. 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.
Collecting
Because of the long history and wide variety in designs, playing cards are also collector's items.[94] According to Guinness World Records, the largest playing card collection comprises 11,087 decks and is owned by Liu Fuchang of China.[95] Individual playing cards are also collected, such as the world record collection of 8,520 different Jokers belonging to Tony de Santis of Italy.[96]
Custom designs and artwork
Custom decks may be produced for myriad purposes. Across the world, both individuals and large companies such as United States Playing Card Company (USPCC) design and release many different styles of decks,[97] including commemorative decks[98] and souvenir decks.[12][99] Bold and colorful designs tend to be used for cardistry decks,[1][100][101] while more generally, playing cards (as well as tarot cards) may focus on artistic value.[98][102][103][104] Custom deck production is commonly funded on platforms such as Kickstarter,[105][106][107] with companies offering card printing services to the public.
In 1976, the JPL Gallery in London commissioned a card deck from a variety of contemporary British artists including Maggie Hambling, Patrick Heron, David Hockney, Howard Hodgkin, John Hoyland, and Allen Jones called "The Deck of Cards".[108] Forty years later in 2016, the British Council commissioned a similar deck called "Taash ke Patte" featuring Indian artists such as Bhuri Bai, Shilpa Gupta, Krishen Khanna, Ram Rahman, Gulam Mohammed Sheikh, Arpita Singh, and Thukral & Tagra.[108][109][110] American artist Tom Sachs has printed several custom decks featuring photos of his artwork.[111][112]
Military identification
Playing cards are a useful tool to pass information to troops during downtime. In World War II, the United States Playing Card Company produced a deck of cards featuring silhouettes of American, British, German, and Japanese aircraft.[113] The Allies also produced maps concealed in playing cards.[114] During the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the US military produced Most-wanted Iraqi playing cards to help soldiers identify enemy leaders. According to a Defense Intelligence Agency spokesperson, the practice actually dates back to the American Civil War.[115] A design depicting Igor Girkin and presumably other Russian leaders appeared during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Card decks have also been used as an educational tool to help military personnel and civilians identify unexploded ordnance.[116]
Cold case cards
A single card from an Australian cold case playing card deck
Police departments,[117] local governments, state prison systems,[118] and even private organizations[119] across the United States and other countries have created decks of cards that feature photos, names, and details of cold case victims or missing persons on each card.[14][120] These decks are sold in prison commissaries, or even to the public,[117] in the hopes that an inmate (or anyone else) might provide a new lead.[121] Cold case card programs have been introduced in over a dozen states, including by Oklahoma's State Bureau of Investigation,[122] Connecticut's Division of Criminal Justice, Delaware's Department of Correction,[123] the Florida Department of Law Enforcement,[124] and Rhode Island's Department of Corrections,[125] among others. Among inmates, they may be called "snitch cards".[126]
Symbols in Unicode
♠ ♣
♥ ♦
♤ ♧
♡ ♢
Suit symbols
In Unicode U+2660 ♠ BLACK SPADE SUIT
U+2661 ♡ WHITE HEART SUIT
U+2662 ♢ WHITE DIAMOND SUIT
U+2663 ♣ BLACK CLUB SUIT
U+2664 ♤ WHITE SPADE SUIT
U+2665 ♥ BLACK HEART SUIT
U+2666 ♦ BLACK DIAMOND SUIT
U+2667 ♧ WHITE CLUB SUIT
Main article: Playing cards in Unicode
The Unicode standard for character encoding defines 8 characters (symbols) for card suits in the Miscellaneous Symbols block, at U+2660–2667. The Unicode names for each group of four glyphs are 'black' and 'white' but might have been more accurately described as 'solid' and 'outline' since the colour actually used at display or printing time is an application choice.
Later, Unicode 7.0 added the 52 cards of the modern French pack, plus 4 knights, and a character for "Playing Card Back" and black, red and white jokers, in the Playing Cards block (U+1F0A0–1F0FF).[127]
Journals
Journals and magazines dedicated to the subject of playing cards include:
Das Blatt – German publication primarily on playing card designs and history
The Playing-Card – international publication incorporating research articles on playing cards and card games
Clear the Decks – American publication of the 52 Plus Joker Club for playing card collectors
See also
Types of decks
Standard 52-card deck
Stripped deck
Tarot
Transformation playing card
Trick deck
Uses
Card game
Cartomancy
Card manipulation
Card money
Card throwing
House of cards
Sleight of hand
Geographic origin
Chinese playing cards
French playing cards
Ganjifa
German playing cards
Hanafuda
Italian playing cards
Karuta
Spanish playing cards
Swiss playing cards
Tujeon
Terminology
Glossary of card game terms
List of playing card nicknames
Specific decks
Archaeology awareness playing cards
Most-wanted Iraqi playing cards
Politicards
Trading card
Zener cards (parapsychology)
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
Playing card organisations
Footnotes
Also called the International or Anglo-American pattern, but 'English pattern' is the name recommended by the International Playing-Card Society.
Further reading
Maltese playing cards. Bonello, Giovanni (January 2005). Michael Cooper (ed.). "The Playing-card" (PDF). Journal of the International Playing-Card Society. 32 (3): 191–197. ISSN 0305-2133. Archived from the original (PDF) on 29 April 2005.
Griffiths, Antony. Prints and Printmaking British Museum Press (in UK),2nd edn, 1996 ISBN 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, Add MS 12228, fol. 313v), c. 1352
Singer, Samuel Weller (1816), Researches into the History of Playing Cards, R. Triphook
References
Citations
Pang, Kevin (April 21, 2015). "72 Hours Inside the Eye-Popping World of Cardistry". Vanity Fair. Retrieved 29 July 2019.
Cepeda, Esther (July 26, 2019). "Cardistry transforms deck of cards into performance art". Post Independent. Retrieved 28 July 2019.
Klimek, Chris (November 30, 2018). "Ricky Jay Remembered, From The Wings: An Assistant's Thoughts On The Late Magician". NPR. Retrieved 29 July 2019. The second act climaxed with him throwing cards into watermelon, first the squishy interior, then the "pachydermatic outer melon layer."
Hochman, Gene; Dawson, Tom; Dawson, Judy (2000). The Hochman Encyclopedia of American Playing Cards. Stamford, CT: U.S. Games Systems. ISBN 1572812974. OCLC 44732377.
Pattern Sheet 80 at i-p-c-s.org. Retrieved 23 August 2020.
Decker, Depaulis & Dummett 1996, p. ix.
Kaplan, Michael (June 29, 2016). "How 'Advantage Players' Game the Casinos". The New York Times. Retrieved 6 August 2019.
Wong, Alex (April 4, 2019). "How young magicians are learning to cast a spell on a modern audience". National Post. Retrieved 29 July 2019.
Mallonee, Laura (November 9, 2018). "The Secret Tools Magicians Use to Fool You". Wired. Retrieved 6 August 2019.
Hegel, Theresa (January 10, 2018). "Smart Promotional Items at CES". Advertising Specialty Institute. Retrieved 29 July 2019.
Sawyer, Miranda (June 2, 2019). "'The public has a right to art': the radical joy of Keith Haring". The Guardian. Retrieved 29 July 2019. His art is everywhere. There are Haring T-shirts, Haring shoes, Haring chairs. You can buy Haring baseball hats and badges and baby-carriers and playing cards and stickers and keyrings.
Wilson, Lexi (December 1, 2018). "A new deck of cards with a Bakersfield twist". Bakersfield Now. Retrieved 29 July 2019.
Xinhua (2019-05-17). "Shanghai uses playing cards to promote garbage sorting". China Daily. Retrieved 29 July 2019.
"N.Y card collection includes 6,356 decks". NBC News. Associated Press. 2008-10-12. Retrieved 30 July 2019.
Stack Commerce (January 16, 2018). "These playing cards help you learn about design". Popular Science. Retrieved 29 July 2019.
Ramzi, Lilah (February 25, 2019). "All Dressed Up and Nowhere to Go: The Best Looks to Wear at Home". Vogue. Retrieved 29 July 2019. Tiffany & Co. playing cards, $115
Seideman, David (January 18, 2019). "Trading Cards Continue To Trounce The S&P 500 As Alternative Investments". Forbes. Retrieved 6 August 2019.
Sullivan, Paul (March 23, 2018). "Trading Cards: A Hobby That Became a Multimillion-Dollar Investment". The New York Times. Retrieved 6 August 2019.
Needham 1954, pp. 131–132.
Wilkinson, W.H. (1895). "Chinese Origin of Playing Cards". American Anthropologist. VIII (1): 61–78. doi:10.1525/aa.1895.8.1.02a00070.
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): 389–406. doi:10.1017/S0041977X00008466. S2CID 159872810.
Needham 2004, p. 328 "it is also now rather well-established that dominoes and playing-cards were originally Chinese developments from dice."
Needham 2004, p. 332 "Numbered dice, anciently widespread, were on a related line of development which gave rise to dominoes and playing-cards (+9th-century China)."
"Works titled 杜陽雜編". Chinese Text Project. Retrieved 18 January 2023.
Theobald, Ulrich (2012-09-30). "Duyang zabian". ChinaKnowledge.de: An Encyclopaedia on Chinese History, Literature and Art. Retrieved 18 January 2023.
Lo, Andrew (2000). "The game of leaves: An inquiry into the origin of Chinese playing cards". Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies. 63 (3): 389–406. doi:10.1017/S0041977X00008466. S2CID 159872810 – via Cambridge University Press.
Parlett, David. "Chinese Leaf Game: Did the Chinese really invent card games?". Historic Card Games. Retrieved 18 January 2023.
Zhou, Songfang (1997). "On the Story of Late Tang Poet Li He". Journal of the Graduates Sun Yat-sen University. 18 (3): 31–35.
Needham & Tsien 1985, p. 131.
Needham 2004, p. 329.
Parlett, David, "The Chinese "Leaf" Game", March 2015.
Needham & Tsien 1985, p. 132.
Money-suited playing cards at The Mahjong Tile Set
Playing card basics at the International Playing-Card Society website
Needham & Tsien 1985, p. 307.
Dummett, Michael (1980). The Game of Tarot. Duckworth. p. 41. ISBN 0-7156-1014-7.
Nosowitz, Dan (2020-07-13). "Playing Cards Around the World and Through the Ages". Atlas Obscura. Retrieved 2023-11-03.
Mayer, Leo Ary (1939), Le Bulletin de l'Institut français d'archéologie orientale, vol. 38, pp. 113–118, retrieved 2008-09-08.
International Playing Cards Society Journal, 30-3, page 139
Pollett, Andrea "The Playing-Card", Vol. 31, No 1 pp. 34–41.
Mamluk cards. Cards.old.no. Retrieved on 2015-05-10.
Wintle, Simon. Moorish playing cards at The World of Playing Cards. Retrieved 22 July 2015.
The Mamluk Cards. L-pollett.tripod.com. Retrieved on 2015-05-10.
No trump trick-taking games at pagat.com
An Introduction at i-p-c-s.org. Retrieved 3 November 2023.
Denning (1996), p. 14.
Ferg, Wayland & Wayland (2007), p. 117.
Peter F. Kopp: Die frühesten Spielkarten in der Schweiz. In: Zeitschrift für schweizerische Archäologie und Kunstgeschichte 30 (1973), pp. 130–145, here 130.
Timothy B. Husband: The World in Play. Luxury Cards 1430–1540. Metropolitan Museum of Art 2016, S. 13.
Hellmut Rosenfeld: Zu den frühesten Spielkarten in der Schweiz. Eine Entgegnung. In: Zeitschrift für schweizerische Archäologie und Kunstgeschichte 32 (1975), pp. 179–180.
"Early Prohibitions of Playing Cards (Trionfi.com)".
Dummett (1980), pp.11–13.
Detlef Hoffmann: Kultur- und Kunstgeschichte der Spielkarte. Marburg: Jonas Verlag 1995, p. 43.
"Johannes of Rheinfelden, 1377". Trionfi. Retrieved 2015-09-28.
Wilhelm Ludwig Schreiber: Die ältesten Spielkarten und die auf das Kartenspiel Bezug habenden Urkunden des 14. und 15. Jahrhunderts. Heitz, Straßburg 1937.
Depaulis 2013, pp. 165–169.
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
Andy's Playing Cards - The Tarot And Other Early Cards - page XVII - the moorish deck. L-pollett.tripod.com. Retrieved on 2015-05-10.
"Tarot and its history". Trionfi.
"Tarot and its history". Trionfi.
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
Banzhaf, Hajo (1994), Il Grande Libro dei Tarocchi (in Italian), Roma: Hermes Edizioni, pp. 16, 192, ISBN 978-88-7938-047-8
Guiffrey, Jules (1871). "Recherches sur les cartes à jouer et sur leur fabrication en Belgique depuis 1379 jusqu'à la fin du XVIIIe siècle, par Alexandre Pinchar". Bibliothèque de l'École des chartes. 32 (1): 198–199.
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.
"Early Card painters and Printers in Germany, Austria and Flandern (14th and 15th century)". Trionfi.
"The Cloisters Playing Cards, ca. 1475–80". Metropolitan Museum of Art. Retrieved 19 May 2015.
"Early Playing Cards Research". Trionfi. Retrieved 22 September 2014.
"The Introduction of Playing-Cards to Europe". jducoeur.org.
History of Playing-Cards at International Playing-Card Society website
Wintle, Simon. Early references to Playing Cards at World of Playing Cards.
Barrington, Daines (1787). Archaeologia, or, Miscellaneous tracts relating to antiquity. Vol. 8. Society of Antiquaries of London. p. 141.
"knave, n, 2". Oxford English Dictionary (2 ed.). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. 1989.
"A Brief company history". www.makersofplayingcards.org. Retrieved 7 December 2020.
"Worshipful Company of Makers of Playing Cards". Worshipful Company of Makers of Playing Cards. Retrieved 24 September 2019.
Andy's Playing Cards - Japanese and Korean Cards. L-pollett.tripod.com. Retrieved on 2015-05-10.
International Playing Cards Society Journal 30-1 page 34
International Playing Cards Society Journal. XXVII-5 p. 186; and 31-1 p. 22
Fryxell, David A. (2014-02-07) History Matters: Playing Cards. Family Tree Magazine.
"Playing cards featuring logo of the FJ Holden". National Museum of Australia.
Parlett, David (1990), The Oxford Guide to Card Games, Oxford University Press, p. 190, ISBN 978-0-19-214165-1
US Playing Card Co. – A Brief History of Playing Cards (archive.org mirror)
Beal, George (1975). Playing cards and their story. New York: Arco Publishing Comoany Inc. p. 58
Parlett, David (1990), The Oxford Guide to Card Games, Oxford University Press, p. 191, ISBN 978-0-19-214165-1
"Collections News | Albert Field Playing Cards go online". News from Columbia's Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Columbia University Libraries. September 10, 2018. Retrieved 30 July 2019.
Owens, Anne Marie Dear (August 25, 2017). "Vanderbilt now home to extraordinary gaming collection". Vanderbilt University. Retrieved 28 July 2019.
"Standard pattern notes". I-p-c-s.org. Archived from the original on December 11, 2018. Retrieved 2015-05-10.
"Lefty's "Always right" double deck of playing cards". Lefty's.
"Sinister Deck: The Left-Handed Card Deck With Famous Lefties".
"Special Techniques". Cartamundi. Retrieved 29 July 2019.
Curcio, Tony (August 7, 2017). "Rollem installs new Slipstream Automatic Card-Cutting System at Napco". Graphic Arts. Retrieved 6 August 2019. Upon learning that this specialized slitting, collating, and round-cornering machine is used by the world's top playing card manufacturers, and after seeing demonstrations of full press sheets trimmed, cut, collated and round-cornered at speeds up to 2,000 sheets per hour with 100% accuracy, we knew we had found our solution.
Matthews, Andy (July 27, 2017). "How Playing Cards Are Made". Meeple Mountain. Retrieved 28 July 2019.
US 4779401, Thomas Pedersen, "Arrangement for manufacturing and packaging cards, especially playing cards", published 1988-10-25
"Casino: Cards destroyed before knowing of scheme". Courier Post. Associated Press. August 15, 2015. Retrieved 6 August 2019.
Attina, Andy (April 8, 2010). "Mayfield Heights man displays almost 4,000 playing card decks he has collected in just 10 years". cleveland.com. Retrieved 28 July 2019.
"Largest collection of playing cards". Guinness World Records. November 1, 2007. Retrieved 24 July 2019.
"Largest collection of joker playing cards". Guinness World Records. Retrieved 31 January 2020.
"Custom Printing - Customized Playing Cards". Bicycle Playing Cards. The United States Playing Card Company. Retrieved 29 July 2019.
"Did you know that the Soviet Union created a Maya playing cards deck back in the 50s?". Yucatan Times. December 7, 2018. Retrieved 29 July 2019.
Clark, Natalie (July 9, 2019). "New deck of cards features stories of veteran-run businesses, charities". WLWT5. Retrieved 28 July 2019.
Klara, Robert (June 15, 2016). "How One of YouTube's Most Hypnotic Stars Is Building a Brand Around His 'Cardistry'". Adweek. Retrieved 29 July 2019.
Thomas, Nicole; Helmen, Jake (February 26, 2019). "Ball State juniors raise awareness with custom playing card company". Ball State Daily News. Retrieved 28 July 2019.
Lee, Giacomo (February 6, 2019). "55 leading designers and illustrators have designed the world's most unique deck of cards". Digital Arts. Retrieved 29 July 2019.
Walker, Harron (February 20, 2019). "This Artist Is Making the Queerest Deck of Cards Ever". Out Magazine. Retrieved 29 July 2019.
Tortorello, Michael (November 2, 2017). "Decks of Cards That Will Wow Your Poker Buddies". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 28 July 2019.
Cherney, Elyssa (April 15, 2019). "Crowdfunding is a popular way to raise money. Just don't count on getting a refund if something goes wrong". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved 28 July 2019.
Glatzer, Jason (June 27, 2015). "Peeking On the Future of Poker: What's Going On At Kickstarter". PokerNews. Retrieved 28 July 2019.
Blanchard, Kaitlyn (May 14, 2019). "Swinburne alumnus works his magic". Swinburne University of Technology. Retrieved 6 August 2019.
"Leading the pack: A card-size survey of modern and contemporary Indian art". Christie's. 19 May 2017. Retrieved 28 July 2019.
Chattopadhyay, Pallavi (May 14, 2016). "Check Mate: For the love of playing cards". The Indian Express. Retrieved 1 August 2019.
Lopez, Rachel (June 15, 2017). "Aces! Christie's to auction deck of cards painted by 54 Indian artists". Hindustan Times. Retrieved 1 August 2019.
Lubow, Arthur (March 11, 2016). "Tom Sachs's Workshop: Willy Wonka Would Approve". The New York Times. Retrieved 28 March 2023. The entrance passes through a quirky bodega (its hours are as erratic as everything else in Sachs World) that offers for sale such souvenirs as the phony Swiss passport, a deck of Sachs-designed playing cards and assorted zines that the studio puts out.
Estiler, Keith (April 22, 2019). "A Look Inside the Tom Sachs x BEAMS Pop-Up Shop in Tokyo". Hypebeast. Retrieved 28 March 2023. Accompanying the co-branded tees is select hardware from Tom Sachs studio such as foldable chairs, quarter screws, Japanese playing cards, note pads, multi-tonal pens, as well as the Noguchi Museum x Tom Sachs floor lamps.
"WWII Aircraft Spotting Cards". 14 May 2016. Archived from the original on 2016-05-14.
"OFLAG IVC PRISONER OF WAR CAMP AT COLDITZ CASTLE, GERMANY DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR". Imperial War Museums.
Burgess, Lisa (17 April 2003). "Buyers beware: The real Iraq 'most wanted' cards are still awaiting distribution". Stars and Stripes. Archived from the original on 24 March 2017. Retrieved 17 February 2017.
"Playing Cards as Weapons of War". PlayingCardDecks.com. 16 April 2019.
"Rhode Island Cold Case by Pawtucket Police Department". Rhode Island Cold Case. Retrieved 6 August 2019.
"Cold Case Cards". Connecticut State Department of Correction. Retrieved 6 August 2019.
Masters, Emily (October 29, 2017). "New York cold case playing cards hit 10-year mark". Times Union. Retrieved 30 July 2019.
Balchunas, Caroline (October 18, 2017). "Cold case playing cards given to Lowcountry inmates offer hope of solving old crimes". WCIV ABC 4. Retrieved 30 July 2019.
Janos, Adam (December 29, 2017). "How Inmates Help Solve Cold-Case Murders While Playing Cards". A&E. Retrieved 30 July 2019.
Harmon, Drew (July 22, 2019). "OSBI unit brings cold cases to light". The Edmond Sun. Retrieved 30 July 2019.
Gronau, Ian (December 1, 2018). "Panel raises concern about 'cold case' playing cards in prisons". Delaware State News. Retrieved 30 July 2019.
"Cold Case Playing Cards". Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Retrieved 30 July 2019.
Milkovits, Amanda (December 18, 2018). "Betting on a tipped hand, police to release playing cards featuring cold cases". Providence Journal. Retrieved 30 July 2019.
McCracken, Chance (July 5, 2011). "'Snitch cards' use inmates to help solve crimes". KSL.com. Retrieved 30 July 2019.
Unicode – Playing Cards Block (PDF), archived (PDF) from the original on 2010-10-26, retrieved 2014-11-08
Cited sources
Denning, Trevor (1996). The Playing Cards of Spain. London: Cygnus Arts.
Depaulis, Thierry (2013). "Cards and Cards: Early References to Playing Cards in England" in The Playing-Card, Vol. 41, No. 3, Jan-Mar 2013, ISSN 1752-671X.
Dummett, Michael (1980). The Game of Tarot. London: Duckworth.
Ferg, Alan, Virginia Wayland and Harold Wayland (2007). "Recognizing a Nineteenth-Century Apache Playing Card Artist: The Tonte Naipero" in The Playing-Card, Vol. 36, No. 2, Oct-Dec 2007. 100–120.
Needham, Joseph (1954), Science and Civilisation in China: Volume 1, Introductory Orientations, Cambridge University Press
Needham, Joseph (2004) [1962], Science and Civilisation in China: Volume 4, Physics and Physical Technology; Part 1, Physics, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-05802-3
Needham, Joseph; Tsien, Tsuen-hsuin (1985), Science and Civilization in China: Volume 5, Chemistry and Chemical Technology, Part 1, Paper and Printing, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-08690-6
External links
Playing card
at Wikipedia's sister projects
Definitions from Wiktionary
Media from Commons
Quotations from Wikiquote
Texts from Wikisource
Textbooks from Wikibooks
Data from Wikidata
Playing card at Curlie
vte
Playing cards
Standard
52-card deck
Playing card suits
SpadesHeartsDiamondsClubs
Ranks
Ace Ace of spadesAce of heartsKingQueen Queen of spadesJackCurse of ScotlandBeer card
Other packs
Piquet packFrench packGerman packItalian packSpanish packSwiss packTarot packFour-colour pack
Other cards
BannerBlankFace card/Court card (Knight, Ober, Unter)Pip card (Deuce, Weli)JokerCard nicknamesStripped deckTalonUnicode
Other suits
German
LeavesHearts
Swiss
ShieldsRoses
German and Swiss
AcornsBells
Latin (Italian/Spanish)
CupsCoinsBatonsSwords
Manufacturers
and brands
Manufacturers
ASS AltenburgerCartamundiCopagDal NegroFournierFrance CartesF.X. SchmidGemacoLiberty Playing Card CompanyModianoNintendoNürnberger-Spielkarten-VerlagOishi TengudoPiatnikTrefl Playing Card CompanyU.S. Games SystemsUnited States Playing Card Company
Brands
BicycleGrimaud
Defunct
Bielefelder Spielkarten
vte
Occult tarot
Occultists
Antoine Court de GébelinEtteillaÉliphas LéviGérard EncausseOswald WirthArthur Edward WaitePamela Colman SmithG. O. MebesValentin TombergMouni SadhuAleister CrowleyPaul Foster CaseManly P. Hall
Major Arcana
numbered cards
O The FoolI The MagicianII The High PriestessIII The EmpressIV The EmperorV The HierophantVI The LoversVII The ChariotVIII (XI) JusticeIX The HermitX Wheel of FortuneXI (VIII) StrengthXII The Hanged ManXIII DeathXIV TemperanceXV The DevilXVI The TowerXVII The StarXVIII The MoonXIX The SunXX JudgementXXI The World
Minor Arcana
suit cards
Coins, disks, or pentacles
AceTwoThreeFourFiveSixSevenEightNineTenPageKnightQueenKing
Wands, rods, staffs, or staves
AceTwoThreeFourFiveSixSevenEightNineTenPageKnightQueenKing
Cups, goblets, or vessels
AceTwoThreeFourFiveSixSevenEightNineTenPageKnightQueenKing
Swords or blades
AceTwoThreeFourFiveSixSevenEightNineTenPageKnightQueenKing
Decks
MarseillesSwiss 1JJRider–Waite The Pictorial Key to the TarotThoth The Book of Thoth
Related
CartomancyHermetic QabalahTarotTarot Garden
Tarot category Card games category WikiProject Occulticon Religion portal
vte
Poker
Index of poker articles
Overview
BettingCheatingGlossaryHistory Poker boomTournaments
Play
Elements
ChipPositionPotPlaying cardHands Non-standardTell
Plays
AggressionBluffCheck-raiseDrawIsolationProtectionSteal
Variations
BragDraw poker Five-card drawStud poker Five-card studSeven-card studRazzCommunity card poker Texas hold 'emGreek hold 'emOmaha hold 'emSix-plus hold 'emCasino games Caribbean studLet It RideMississippi StudThree Card PokerFour Card PokerChinese poker Open-face Chinese poker
Strategy
Fundamental theorem of pokerMorton's theoremPot oddsSlow play
Computing
Computer poker playerOnline pokerPoker tools
Category Commons Outline
Authority control databases Edit this at Wikidata
International
FAST 2
National
SpainFranceBnF dataGermanyIsraelUnited StatesLatvia 2JapanCzech Republic
Other
NARA
Categories: Playing cardsChinese inventionsHistory of card decksPaper productsTang dynastyTarot
Card game
Article
Talk
Read
Edit
View history
Tools
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Card games)
For other uses, see Card game (disambiguation).
The Card Players, 17th-century painting by Theodoor Rombouts
A card game is any game using playing cards as the primary device with which the game is played, be they traditional or game-specific. Countless card games exist, including families of related games (such as poker). A small number of card games played with traditional decks have formally standardized rules with international tournaments being held, but most are folk games whose rules may vary by region, culture, location or from circle to circle.
Traditional card games are played with a deck or pack of playing cards which are identical in size and shape. Each card has two sides, the face and the back. Normally the backs of the cards are indistinguishable. The faces of the cards may all be unique, or there can be duplicates. The composition of a deck is known to each player. In some cases several decks are shuffled together to form a single pack or shoe. Modern card games usually have bespoke decks, often with a vast amount of cards, and can include number or action cards. This type of game is generally regarded as part of the board game hobby.
Games using playing cards exploit the fact that cards are individually identifiable from one side only, so that each player knows only the cards they hold and not those held by anyone else. For this reason card games are often characterized as games of chance or "imperfect information"—as distinct from games of strategy or perfect information, where the current position is fully visible to all players throughout the game.[1] Many games that are not generally placed in the family of card games do in fact use cards for some aspect of their play.
Some games that are placed in the card game genre involve a board. The distinction is that the play in a card game chiefly depends on the use of the cards by players (the board is a guide for scorekeeping or for card placement), while board games (the principal non-card game genre to use cards) generally focus on the players' positions on the board, and use the cards for some secondary purpose.
History
14th and 15th centuries
Despite the presence of playing cards in Europe being recorded from around 1370, it is not until 1408 that the first card game is described in a document about the exploits of two card sharps; although it is evidently very simple, the game is not named. In fact the earliest games to be mentioned by name are Gleek, Ronfa and Condemnade, the latter being the game played by the aforementioned card cheats. All three are recorded during the 15th century,[2] along with Karnöffel, first mentioned in 1426 and which is still played in several forms today, including Bruus, Knüffeln, Kaiserspiel and Styrivolt.
Since the arrival of trick-taking games in Europe in the late 14th century, there have only been two major innovations. The first was the introduction of trump cards with the power to beat all cards in other suits.[3] Such cards were initially called trionfi and first appeared with the advent of Tarot cards in which there is a separate, permament trump suit comprising a number of picture cards.[4] The first known example of such cards was ordered by the Duke of Milan around 1420 and included 16 trumps with images of Greek and Roman gods.[5] Thus games played with Tarot cards appeared very early on and spread to most parts of Europe with the notable exceptions of the British Isles, the Iberian Peninsula, and the Balkans.[6] However, we do not know the rules of the early Tarot games; the earliest detailed description in any language being those published by the Abbé de Marolles in Nevers in 1637.[7][8]
The concept of trumps was sufficiently powerful that it was soon transferred to games played with far cheaper ordinary packs of cards, as opposed to expensive Tarot cards. The first of these was Triomphe, the name simply being the French equivalent of the Italian trionfi. Although not testified before 1538, its first rules were written by a Spaniard who left his native country for Milan in 1509 never to return; thus the game may date to the late 15th century.[9][10][11]
Others games that may well date to the 15th century are Pochen – the game of Bocken or Boeckels being attested in Strasbourg in 1441[12] – and Thirty-One, which is first mentioned in a French translation of a 1440 sermon by the Italian, Saint Bernadine, the name actually referring to two different card games: one like Pontoon and one like Commerce.[13]
16th century
In the 16th century printed documents replace handwritten sources and card games become a popular topic with preachers, autobiographists and writers in general. A key source of the games in vogue in France and Europe at that time is François Rabelais, whose fictional character Gargantua played no less than 30 card games, many of which are recognisable. They include: Aluette, Bête, Cent, Coquimbert, Coucou, Flush or Flux, Gé (Pairs), Gleek, Lansquenet, Piquet, Post and Pair, Primero, Ronfa, Triomphe, Sequence, Speculation, Tarot and Trente-et-Un; possibly Rams, Mouche and Brandeln as well.[14] Girolamo Cardano also provides invaluable information including the earliest rules of Trappola. Among the most popular were the games of Flusso and Primiera, which originated in Italy and spread throughout Europe, becoming known in England as Flush and Primero.[8]
In Britain the earliest known European fishing game was recorded in 1522.[15] Another first was Losing Loadum, noted by Florio in 1591, which is the earliest known English point-trick game.[16] In Scotland, the game of Mawe, testified in the 1550s, evolved from a country game into one played at the royal Scottish court, becoming a favourite of James VI.[17] The ancestor of Cribbage – a game called Noddy – is mentioned for the first time in 1589, "Noddy" being the Knave turned for trump at the start of play.[18]
17th century
The 17th century saw an upsurge in the number of new games being reported as well as the first sets of rules, those for Piquet appearing in 1632 and Reversis in 1634.[8] The first French games compendium, La Maison Académique, appeared in 1654 and it was followed in 1674 by Charles Cotton's The Compleat Gamester, although an earlier manuscript of games by Francis Willughby was written sometime between 1665 and 1670.[19] Cotton records the first rules for the classic English games of Cribbage, a descendant of Noddy, and Whist, a development of English Trump or Ruff ('ruff' then meaning 'rob') in which four players were dealt 12 cards each and the dealer 'robbed' from the remaining stock of 4 cards.[20]
Piquet was a two-player, trick-taking game that originated in France, probably in the 16th century and was initially played with 36 cards before, around 1690, the pack reduced to the 32 cards that gives the Piquet pack its name. Reversis is a reverse game in which players avoid taking tricks and appears to be an Italian invention that came to France around 1600 and spread rapidly to other countries in Europe.[8]
In the mid-17th century, a certain game named after Cardinal Mazarin, prime minister to King Louis XIV, became very popular at the French royal court. Called Hoc Mazarin, it had three phases, the final one of which evolved into a much simpler game called Manille that was renamed Comète on the appearance of Halley's Comet in 1682.[21] In Comète the aim is to be first to shed all one's hand cards to sequences laid out in rows on the table. However, there are certain cards known as 'stops' or hocs: cards that end a sequence and give the one who played it the advantage of being able to start a new sequence. This concept spread to other 17th and 18th century games including Poque, Comete, Emprunt, Manille, Nain Jaune and Lindor,[22][23] all except Emprunt being still played in some form today.
It was the 17th century that saw the second of the two great innovations being introduced into trick-taking games: the concept of bidding.[3] This first emerged in the Spanish game of Ombre, an evolution of Triomphe that "in its time, was the most successful card game ever invented."[24] Ombre's origins are unclear and obfuscated by the existence of a game called Homme or Bête in France, ombre and homme being respectively Spanish and French for 'man'. In Ombre, the player who won the bidding became the "Man" and played alone against the other two. The game spread rapidly across Europe, spawning variants for different numbers of players and known as Quadrille, Quintille, Médiateur and Solo. Quadrille went on to become highly fashionable in England during the 18th century and is mentioned several times, for example, in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice.
The first rules of any game in the German language were those for Rümpffen published in 1608 and later expanded in several subsequent editions. In addition, the first German games compendium, Palamedes Redivivus appeared in 1678, containing the rules for Hoick (Hoc), Ombre, Picquet (sic), Rümpffen and Thurnspiel.
18th century
The evolution of card games continued apace, with notable national games emerging like Briscola and Tressette (Italy), Schafkopf (Bavaria), Jass (Switzerland), Mariage, the ancestor of Austria's Schnapsen and Germany's Sixty-Six, and Tapp Tarock, the progenitor of most modern central European Tarot games. Whist spread to the continent becoming very popular in the north and west. In France, Comet appeared, a game that later evolved into Nain Jaune and the Victorian game of Pope Joan.
Types
Preferans, a trick-taking card game version popular in Croatia
Card games may be classified in different ways: by their objective, by the equipment used (e.g. number of cards and type of suits), by country of origin or by mechanism (how the game is played). Parlett and McLeod predominantly group cards games by mechanism of which there are five categories: outplay, card exchange, hand comparison, layout and a miscellaneous category that includes combat and compendium games. These are described in the following sections.[25]
Outplay games
Easily the largest category of games in which players have a hand of cards and must play them out to the table. Play ends when players have played all their cards.[25]
Trick-taking games
See also: List of trick-taking games
Trick-taking games are the largest category of outplay games. Players typically receive an equal number of cards and a trick involves each player playing a card face up to the table – the rules of play dictating what cards may be played and who wins the trick.[26]
There are two main types of trick-taking game with different objectives. Both are based on the play of multiple tricks, in each of which each player plays a single card from their hand, and based on the values of played cards one player wins or "takes" the trick. In plain-trick games the aim is to win a number of tricks, a specific trick or as many tricks as possible, without regard to the actual cards. In point-trick games, the number of tricks is immaterial; what counts is the value, in points, of the cards captured.[26]
Plain-trick games
Many common Anglo-American games fall into the category of plain-trick games. The usual objective is to take the most tricks, but variations taking all tricks, making as few tricks (or penalty cards) as possible or taking an exact number of tricks. Bridge, Whist and Spades are popular examples. Hearts, Black Lady and Black Maria are examples of reverse games in which the aim is to avoid certain cards. Plain-trick games may be divided into the following 11 groups:[26]
Whist group. A standard Whist pack is used with cards ranking in their natural order and four players playing in partnerships of two. Usually a trump suit is nominated through turning a card or bidding and the aim is to win as many tricks as possible.
No trump games. As above but there is no trump suit.
Put group. In Put, tricks are won by the highest card regardless of suit. Treys are usually highest.
Last trick group. The player who makes the last trick wins (or loses) the hand.
Trump group. Either trump games in which fewer cards are dealt (e.g. 5) or in which there are chosen suits.
Ombre group. Ombre introduced one of the two most significant features in the history of card games: bidding. Other common characteristics of this family are 3 matadors and a talon of undealt cards.
Boston group. Games of the Boston group are played like Whist, but players form alliances of two or three players depending on the outcome of bidding.
Auction Whist group. Auction or Bid Whist games involved fixed partnerships and an auction to determine the contract to be played.
Preference group. Games of the Préférence family are typically for three players who 10 cards each from a 32-card pack and bid to play alone against the other two.
Exact bidding group. Players bid the exact number of tricks they expect to take and must achieve that to win.
Multi-trick group. Mostly Oriental games in which several cards may be led to a trick at once. However, some European games of the trump group, such as Bruus, also include this feature.
Point-trick games
Point-trick games are all European or of European origin and include the Tarot card games. Individual cards have specific point values and the objective is usually to amass the majority of points by taking tricks, especially those with higher value cards. There are around nine main groups:[26]
Tarot games. All Tarot games use Tarot cards for their original purpose of playing games and are either French- or Spanish-suited. The tarots form a special trump suit and the counting cards are the highest, second highest and lowest trumps along with the court cards. There are usually bonuses for certain feats or card combinations and most games have multiple contracts which the players may bid for. Notable examples include German Cego, Austrian Tarock, French Tarot and Italian Minchiate.
Manille group. A small group of mainly French and Spanish games originating in "Malille" characterised by the top card being the 9 in Spanish games or the 10 in Belgian and French games. Additional counters are the AKQJ.
Couillon group. A small group from the Benelux countries in which the counters and highest cards are the ace (4), king (3), queen (2) and jack (1). A typical member is Luxembourgisch Konter a Matt.
Trappola group. This family is virtually extinct. Its progenitor, Trappola, was a Venetian game that emerged in the 1500s and was played with a special pack that is still available from Piatnik today. The counters are the ace (6), king (5), knight (4) and jack (3). There were bonuses for certain trick-winning feats.
All Fours group. Based on the old English game of All Fours in which there were game points for High (highest trump), Low (lowest trump), Jack (of trumps) and Game (most card points). Surviving members of the group include American Pitch, British Phat and Irish Don.
Ace–ten games. The ace–ten family includes most of the national games of Europe including German Skat, French Belote, Dutch Klaberjass, Austrian Schnapsen, Spanish Tute, Swiss Jass, Portuguese Sueca, Italian Briscola and Czech Mariáš. Pinochle is an American example of French or Swiss origin. Ace–ten games may be further subdivided into the Schafkopf group, marriage group (which includes the Jass group), the Sedma group and the German Tarok group (which includes American games like frog and six-bid solo.
Tresette group. Tressette is an Italian game with the odd card ranking of 32AKQJ7654. Aces count 1 point, treys, deuces and courts are worth 1⁄3 point each. Most are Italian variants of Tressette, but Les Quatre Sept is played in Canada.
Reverse games. Historically the most significant was Reversis, now rarely played. The best known reverse game today is Black Lady albeit often misnamed after its predecessor, Hearts, thanks to Microsoft. Reverse games often feature in compendium games.
Miscellaneous games. These include small families of Oriental games such as the King-Ten-Five group, in which the counters are the kings and tens (10 each) and fives (5), and Picture group, in which the AKQJT are worth 1 point each and in which Elfern is the only Western example. Of historical interest are Gleek and Penneech, while Cucco is one played with a special Cucco pack.
Beating games
In beating games the idea is to beat the card just played if possible, otherwise it must be picked up, either alone or together with other cards, and added to the hand. In many beating games the objective is to shed all one's cards, in which case they are also "shedding games". Well known examples include Crazy Eights and Mau Mau.[27]
Adding games
This is a small group whose ancestor is Noddy, now extinct, but which generated the far more interesting games of Costly Colours and Cribbage. Players play in turn and add the values of the cards as they go. The aim is to reach or avoid certain totals and also to score for certain combinations.[28]
Fishing games
"Fishing game" redirects here. For the video game genre, see fishing video game.
In fishing games, cards from the hand are played against cards in a layout on the table, capturing table cards if they match.[29] Fishing games are popular in many nations, including China, where there are many diverse fishing games. Scopa is considered one of the national card games of Italy. Cassino is the only fishing game to be widely played in English-speaking countries. Zwicker has been described as a "simpler and jollier version of Cassino", played in Germany.[30] Tablanet (tablić) is a fishing-style game popular in Balkans.
Matching games
Main article: Matching game
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. Mahjong is a very similar game played with tiles instead of cards. Non-Rummy examples of match-type games generally fall into the "fishing" genre and include the children's games Go Fish and Old Maid.
War group
In games of the war group,[31] also called "catch and collect games" or "accumulating games", the object is to acquire all cards in the deck. Examples include most War type games, and games involving slapping a discard pile such as Slapjack. Egyptian Ratscrew has both of these features.
Climbing games
Climbing games are an Oriental family in which the idea is to play a higher card or combination of cards that the one just played. Alternatively a player must pass or may choose to pass even if able to beat. The sole Western example is the game of President, which is probably derived from an Asian game.[32]
Card exchange games
Card exchange games form another large category in which players exchange a card or cards from their hands with table cards or with other players with the aim, typically, of collecting specific cards or card combinations. Games of the rummy family are the best known.
Draw and discard group
In these games players draw a card from stock, make a move if possible or desired, and then discard a card to a discard pile. Almost all the games of this group are in the rummy family, but Golf is a non-rummy example.[33]
Commerce group
As the name might suggest, players exchange hand cards with a common pool of cards on the table. Examples include Schwimmen, Kemps. James Bond and Whisky Poker. They originated in the old European games of Thirty-One and Commerce.
Cuckoo group
A very old round game played in different forms in different countries. Players are dealt just one card and may try and swap it with a neighbour to avoid having the lowest card or, sometimes, certain penalty cards. The old French game is Coucou and its later English cousin is Ranter Go Round, also called Chase the Ace and Screw Your Neighbour.
A family of such games played with special cards includes Italian Cucù, Scandinavian Gnav, Austrian Hexenspiel and German Vogelspiel.
Quartet group
Games involving collecting sets of cards, the best known of which is Happy Families. Highly successful is its German equivalent, Quartett, which may be played with a Skat pack, but is much more commonly played with proprietary packs.
Card passing group
Games involving passing cards to your neighbours. The classic game is Old Maid which may, however, be derived from German Black Peter and related to the French game of Vieux Garçon. Pig, with its variations of Donkey and Spoons, is also popular.
Layout games
Patience or solitaire games
See also: Patience and solitaire games
Most patience or card solitaire games are designed to be played by one player, but some are designed for two or more players to compete.[25]
Single player patiences or solitaires
Patience games originated in northern Europe and were designed for a single player, hence its subsequent North American name of solitaire. Most games begin with a specific layout of cards, called a tableau, and the object is then either to construct a more elaborate final layout, or to clear the tableau and/or the draw pile or stock by moving all cards to one or more discard or foundation piles.[25]
Competitive patiences
In competitive patiences, two or more players compete to be first to complete a patience or solitaire-like tableau. Some use a common layout; in others each player has a separate layout.[25] Popular examples include Spite and Malice, Racing Demon or Nerts, Spit, Speed and Russian Bank.[34]
Connecting games
The most common of these is Card Dominoes also known as Fan Tan or Parliament in which the idea is to build the four suits in sequence from a central card (the 7 in 52-card games or the Unter in 32-card packs). The winner is the first out and the loser the last left in holding cards.[25]
Hand comparison games
Hand comparison games, also called comparing card games, are mostly gambling games that use cards. Players lay their initial stakes, are dealt cards, may or may not be able to exchange or add to them, and may or may not be able to raise their stakes, and the outcome is decided by some form of comparison of card values or combinations. The main groups are vying and banking games. A smaller mainly Oriental group are partition games in which players divide their hands before comparing.
Vying games
Vying games, are those in which players bet or "vie" on who has the best hand. The player with the best combination of hand cards in a "showdown", or the player able to bluff the others into folding, wins the hand. Easily the best known of the group around the world is Poker, which itself is a family of games with over 100 variants. Other examples include English Brag and the old Basque game of Mus. Most may be classified as gambling games and, while they may involve skill in terms of bluffing and memorising and assessing odds, they involve little or no card playing skill.[35]
Poker games
See also: List of poker variants
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.
Banking games
These are gambling games played for money or chips in which players compete, not against one another, but against a banker. They are commonly played in casinos, but many have become domesticised, played at home for sweets, matchsticks or points. In casino games, the banker will have a 'house advantage' that ensures a profit for the casino. Popular casino games include Blackjack and Baccarat, while Pontoon is a cousin of Blackjack that emerged from the trenches of the First World War to become a popular British family game.[36]
Miscellaneous games
These games do not fit into any of the foregoing categories. The only traditional games in this group are the compendium games, which date back at least 200 years, and Speculation, a 19th century trading game.
Compendium games
Compendium games consist of a sequence of different contracts played in succession. A common pattern is for a number of reverse deals to be played, in which the aim is to avoid certain cards, followed by a final contract which is a domino-type game. Examples include: Barbu, Herzeln, Lorum and Rosbiratschka. In other games, such as Quodlibet and Rumpel, there is a range of widely varying contracts.
Combat games
A new genre not recorded before 1970, most of which use proprietary cards of the collectible card game type (see below). The earliest and best known is Magic: The Gathering.
Card games by objective
Another broad way of classifying card games is by objective. There are four main types as well as a handful of games that have miscellaneous objectives.
Capturing games
In these games the objective is to capture cards or to avoid capturing them. These break down into the following:[37]
Most cards. The aim is to capture as many cards as possible. Most plain trick games fall into this group.
Fewest cards. Common in compendium games, otherwise rare. Often occurs as a contract within a game known as a Misère, Bettel, Null or Nolo.
Exact number of cards. To win games of the exact bidding group a player must take the exact number of tricks bid.
Most points. In point-trick games and most fishing games, the aim is to capture the most points in cards.
Fewest points. Some or all cards incur penalty points and so the aim is to capture as few points as possible.
Exact points. A small group in which players aim to score a specific number of points e.g. Differenzler Jass.
Most or fewest points. In some Jass games e.g. Molotov, the aim is to secure either the most or fewest points, leaving the player in the middle as the loser.
Win last trick. In games like Tuppen, the player who takes the last trick wins; all earlier tricks are irrelevant. Some games also have a bonus or extra points for winning the last trick or winning it with a specific card.
Lose last trick. In a few games, e.g. Krypkille, the aim is to lose the last trick.
Mixed objectives. Some games, e.g. Kaiser, have both positive and negative point cards.
Shedding games
See also: List of shedding-type games
In a shedding game, also called an accumulating game, players start with a hand of cards, and the object of the game is to be the first player to discard all cards from one's hand. Common shedding games include Crazy Eights (commercialized by Mattel as Uno) and Daihinmin. Some matching-type games are also shedding-type games; some variants of Rummy such as Paskahousu, Phase 10, Rummikub, the bluffing game I Doubt It, and the children's games Musta Maija and Old Maid, fall into both categories.
Combination games
In many games, the aim is to form combinations of cards: by addition, by matching sets or forming sequences. All Rummy games are based on the last two principles, although in the basic variants, the end objective is to shed cards which makes them shedding games (see above). However, meld scoring variants such as Canasta or Rommé are true combination games.[38]
Comparing games
Comparing card games are those where hand values are compared to determine the winner, also known as "vying" or "showdown" games. Poker, blackjack, mus, and baccarat are examples of comparing card games. As seen, nearly all of these games are designed as gambling games.
Drinking games
Drinking card games are drinking games using cards, in which the object in playing the game is either to drink or to force others to drink. Many games are ordinary card games with the establishment of "drinking rules"; President, for instance, is virtually identical to Daihinmin but with additional rules governing drinking. Poker can also be played using a number of drinks as the wager. Another game often played as a drinking game is Toepen, quite popular in the Netherlands. Some card games are designed specifically to be played as drinking games.
Proprietary games
These are card games played with a dedicated deck. Many other card games have been designed and published on a commercial or amateur basis. In a few cases, the game uses the standard 52-card deck, but the object is unique. In Eleusis, for example, players play single cards, and are told whether the play was legal or illegal, in an attempt to discover the underlying rules made up by the dealer.
Most of these games however typically use a specially made deck of cards designed specifically for the game (or variations of it). The decks are thus usually proprietary, but may be created by the game's players. Uno, Phase 10, Set, and 1000 Blank White Cards are popular dedicated-deck card games; 1000 Blank White Cards is unique in that the cards for the game are designed by the players of the game while playing it; there is no commercially available deck advertised as such.
Collectible card games (CCGs)
See also: Collectible card game and List of collectible card games
Collectible card games (CCG) are proprietary playing card games. CCGs are games of strategy between two or more players. Each player has their own deck constructed from a very large pool of unique cards in the commercial market. The cards have different effects, costs, and art. New card sets are released periodically and sold as starter decks or booster packs. Obtaining the different cards makes the game a collectible card game, and cards are sold or traded on the secondary market. Magic: The Gathering, Pokémon, and Yu-Gi-Oh! are well-known collectible card games.
Living card games (LCGs)
See also: Living card game and Fantasy Flight Games
Living card games (LCGs) are similar to collectible card games (CCGs), with their most distinguishing feature being a fixed distribution method, which breaks away from the traditional collectible card game format. While new cards for CCGs are usually sold in the form of starter decks or booster packs (the latter being often randomized), LCGs thrive on a model that requires players to acquire one core set in order to play the game, which players can further customize by acquiring extra sets or expansions featuring new content in the form of cards or scenarios. No randomization is involved in the process, thus players that get the same sets or expansions will get the exact same content. The term was popularized by Fantasy Flight Games (FFG) and mainly applies to its products, however some tabletop gaming companies can be seen using a very similar model.
Simulation card games
A deck of either customised dedicated cards or a standard deck of playing cards with assigned meanings is used to simulate the actions of another activity, for example card football.
Fictional card games
See also: List of fictional games § Card games
Many games, including card games, are fabricated by science fiction authors and screenwriters to distance a culture depicted in the story from present-day Western culture. They are commonly used as filler to depict background activities in an atmosphere like a bar or rec room, but sometimes the drama revolves around the play of the game. Some of these games become real card games as the holder of the intellectual property develops and markets a suitable deck and ruleset for the game, while others lack sufficient descriptions of rules, or depend on cards or other hardware that are infeasible or physically impossible.
Typical structure of card games
This section does not cite any sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (June 2018) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)
Number and association of players
The Card Players, 1895 by Paul Cézanne
Historically, card games such as whist and contract bridge were opportunities for quiet socializing, as shown in this 1930s magic lantern slide photo taken in Seattle, Washington.
Any specific card game imposes restrictions on the number of players. The most significant dividing lines run between one-player games and two-player games, and between two-player games and multi-player games. Card games for one player are known as solitaire or patience card games. (See list of solitaire card games.) Generally speaking, they are in many ways special and atypical, although some of them have given rise to two- or multi-player games such as Spite and Malice.
In card games for two players, usually not all cards are distributed to the players, as they would otherwise have perfect information about the game state. Two-player games have always been immensely popular and include some of the most significant card games such as piquet, bezique, sixty-six, klaberjass, gin rummy and cribbage. Many multi-player games started as two-player games that were adapted to a greater number of players. For such adaptations a number of non-obvious choices must be made beginning with the choice of a game orientation.
One way of extending a two-player game to more players is by building two teams of equal size. A common case is four players in two fixed partnerships, sitting crosswise as in whist and contract bridge. Partners sit opposite to each other and cannot see each other's hands. If communication between the partners is allowed at all, then it is usually restricted to a specific list of permitted signs and signals. 17th-century French partnership games such as triomphe were special in that partners sat next to each other and were allowed to communicate freely so long as they did not exchange cards or play out of order.
Another way of extending a two-player game to more players is as a cut-throat or individual game, in which all players play for themselves, and win or lose alone. Most such card games are round games, i.e. they can be played by any number of players starting from two or three, so long as there are enough cards for all.
For some of the most interesting games such as ombre, tarot and skat, the associations between players change from hand to hand. Ultimately players all play on their own, but for each hand, some game mechanism divides the players into two teams. Most typically these are solo games, i.e. games in which one player becomes the soloist and has to achieve some objective against the others, who form a team and win or lose all their points jointly. But in games for more than three players, there may also be a mechanism that selects two players who then have to play against the others.
Direction of play
The players of a card game normally form a circle around a table or other space that can hold cards. The game orientation or direction of play, which is only relevant for three or more players, can be either clockwise or counterclockwise. It is the direction in which various roles in the game proceed. (In real-time card games, there may be no need for a direction of play.) Most regions have a traditional direction of play, such as:
Counterclockwise in most of Asia and in Latin America.
Clockwise in North America and Australia.
Europe is roughly divided into a clockwise area in the north and a counterclockwise area in the south. The boundary runs between England, Ireland, Netherlands, Germany, Austria (mostly), Slovakia, Ukraine and Russia (clockwise) and France, Switzerland, Spain, Italy, Slovenia, Balkans, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Greece and Turkey (counterclockwise).[specify][citation needed]
Games that originate in a region with a strong preference are often initially played in the original direction, even in regions that prefer the opposite direction. For games that have official rules and are played in tournaments, the direction of play is often prescribed in those rules.
Determining who deals
Most games have some form of asymmetry between players. The roles of players are normally expressed in terms of the dealer, i.e. the player whose task it is to shuffle the cards and distribute them to the players. Being the dealer can be a (minor or major) advantage or disadvantage, depending on the game. Therefore, after each played hand, the deal normally passes to the next player according to the game orientation.
As it can still be an advantage or disadvantage to be the first dealer, there are some standard methods for determining who is the first dealer. A common method is by cutting, which works as follows. One player shuffles the deck and places it on the table. Each player lifts a packet of cards from the top, reveals its bottom card, and returns it to the deck. The player who reveals the highest (or lowest) card becomes dealer. In the case of a tie, the process is repeated by the tied players. For some games such as whist this process of cutting is part of the official rules, and the hierarchy of cards for the purpose of cutting (which need not be the same as that used otherwise in the game) is also specified. But in general, any method can be used, such as tossing a coin in case of a two-player game, drawing cards until one player draws an ace, or rolling dice.
Hands, rounds and games
A hand, also called a deal, is a unit of the game that begins with the dealer shuffling and dealing the cards as described below, and ends with the players scoring and the next dealer being determined. The set of cards that each player receives and holds in his or her hands is also known as that player's hand.
The hand is over when the players have finished playing their hands. Most often this occurs when one player (or all) has no cards left. The player who sits after the dealer in the direction of play is known as eldest hand (or in two-player games as elder hand) or forehand. A game round consists of as many hands as there are players. After each hand, the deal is passed on in the direction of play, i.e. the previous eldest hand becomes the new dealer. Normally players score points after each hand. A game may consist of a fixed number of rounds. Alternatively it can be played for a fixed number of points. In this case it is over with the hand in which a player reaches the target score.
Shuffling
Main article: Shuffling
Shuffling is the process of bringing the cards of a pack into a random order. There are a large number of techniques with various advantages and disadvantages. Riffle shuffling is a method in which the deck is divided into two roughly equal-sized halves that are bent and then released, so that the cards interlace.[39] Repeating this process several times randomizes the deck well, but the method is harder to learn than some others and may damage the cards. The overhand shuffle and the Hindu shuffle are two techniques that work by taking batches of cards from the top of the deck and reassembling them in the opposite order. They are easier to learn but must be repeated more often. 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.
For casino games that are played for large sums it is vital that the cards be properly randomized, but for many games this is less critical, and in fact player experience can suffer when the cards are shuffled too well. The official skat rules stipulate that the cards are shuffled well, but according to a decision of the German skat court, a one-handed player should ask another player to do the shuffling, rather than use a shuffling machine, as it would shuffle the cards too well. French belote rules go so far as to prescribe that the deck never be shuffled between hands.
Dealing
The dealer takes all of the cards in the pack, arranges them so that they are in a uniform stack, and shuffles them. In strict play, the dealer then offers the deck to the previous player (in the sense of the game direction) for cutting. If the deal is clockwise, this is the player to the dealer's right; if counterclockwise, it is the player to the dealer's left. The invitation to cut is made by placing the pack, face downward, on the table near the player who is to cut: who then lifts the upper portion of the pack clear of the lower portion and places it alongside. (Normally the two portions have about equal size. Strict rules often indicate that each portion must contain a certain minimum number of cards, such as three or five.) The formerly lower portion is then replaced on top of the formerly upper portion. Instead of cutting, one may also knock on the deck to indicate that one trusts the dealer to have shuffled fairly.
The actual deal (distribution of cards) is done in the direction of play, beginning with eldest hand. The dealer holds the pack, face down, in one hand, and removes cards from the top of it with his or her other hand to distribute to the players, placing them face down on the table in front of the players to whom they are dealt. The cards may be dealt one at a time, or in batches of more than one card; and either the entire pack or a determined number of cards are dealt out. The undealt cards, if any, are left face down in the middle of the table, forming the stock (also called the talon, widow, skat or kitty depending on the game and region).
Throughout the shuffle, cut, and deal, the dealer should prevent the players from seeing the faces of any of the cards. The players should not try to see any of the faces. Should a player accidentally see a card, other than one's own, proper etiquette would be to admit this. It is also dishonest to try to see cards as they are dealt, or to take advantage of having seen a card. Should a card accidentally become exposed, (visible to all), any player can demand a redeal (all the cards are gathered up, and the shuffle, cut, and deal are repeated) or that the card be replaced randomly into the deck ("burning" it) and a replacement dealt from the top to the player who was to receive the revealed card.
When the deal is complete, all players pick up their cards, or "hand", and hold them in such a way that the faces can be seen by the holder of the cards but not the other players, or vice versa depending on the game. It is helpful to fan one's cards out so that if they have corner indices all their values can be seen at once. In most games, it is also useful to sort one's hand, rearranging the cards in a way appropriate to the game. For example, in a trick-taking game it may be easier to have all one's cards of the same suit together, whereas in a rummy game one might sort them by rank or by potential combinations.
Signalling
Normally communication between partners about tactics or the cards in their hands is forbidden. However, in a small number of games communication and/or signalling is permitted and very much part of the play. Most of these games are very old and, often, have rules of play that allow any card to be played at any time. Such games include:
Karnöffel, the oldest card game in Europe still played in some form today, played with German-suited cards, and its surviving descendants:
Knüffeln (north Germany) and Styrivolt (Faroes) played with 48 French-suited cards
Kaiserspiel, Swiss game with a Swiss-suited pack of 48 cards
Mus, a Basque game known since the 18th century, played with a Spanish deck of forty cards;
Brisca, a Spanish game adapted from the French Brisque, is played with a Spanish pack of forty cards;
Watten, a Bavarian and Austrian game, is played with 36 German-suited cards;
Perlaggen, a Tyrolean game played with 33 German-suited cards;
Truc y Flou, a card game of Aragonese origin.
Trut or Truc, reported in the west of France from the 16th century,[40] also known in Catalonia and South America (as Truco).
Rules
This section does not cite any sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (June 2018) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)
A new card game starts in a small way, either as someone's invention, or as a modification of an existing game. Those playing it may agree to change the rules as they wish. The rules that they agree on become the "house rules" under which they play the game. A set of house rules may be accepted as valid by a group of players wherever they play, as it may also be accepted as governing all play within a particular house, café, or club.
When a game becomes sufficiently popular, so that people often play it with strangers, there is a need for a generally accepted set of rules. This need is often met when a particular set of house rules becomes generally recognized. For example, when Whist became popular in 18th-century England, players in the Portland Club agreed on a set of house rules for use on its premises. Players in some other clubs then agreed to follow the "Portland Club" rules, rather than go to the trouble of codifying and printing their own sets of rules. The Portland Club rules eventually became generally accepted throughout England and Western cultures.
There is nothing static or "official" about this process. For the majority of games, there is no one set of universal rules by which the game is played, and the most common ruleset is no more or less than that. Many widely played card games, such as Canasta and Pinochle, have no official regulating body. The most common ruleset is often determined by the most popular distribution of rulebooks for card games. Perhaps the original compilation of popular playing card games was collected by Edmund Hoyle, a self-made authority on many popular parlor games. The U.S. Playing Card Company now owns the eponymous Hoyle brand, and publishes a series of rulebooks for various families of card games that have largely standardized the games' rules in countries and languages where the rulebooks are widely distributed. However, players are free to, and often do, invent "house rules" to supplement or even largely replace the "standard" rules.
If there is a sense in which a card game can have an official set of rules, it is when that card game has an "official" governing body. For example, the rules of tournament bridge are governed by the World Bridge Federation, and by local bodies in various countries such as the American Contract Bridge League in the U.S., and the English Bridge Union in England. The rules of skat are governed by The International Skat Players Association and, in Germany, by the Deutscher Skatverband which publishes the Skatordnung. The rules of French tarot are governed by the Fédération Française de Tarot. The rules of Schafkopf are laid down by the Schafkopfschule in Munich. Even in these cases, the rules must only be followed at games sanctioned by these governing bodies or where the tournament organisers specify them. Players in informal settings are free to implement agreed supplemental or substitute rules. For example, in Schafkopf there are numerous local variants sometimes known as "impure" Schafkopf and specified by assuming the official rules and describing the additions e.g. "with Geier and Bettel, tariff 5/10 cents".
Rule infractions
An infraction is any action which is against the rules of the game, such as playing a card when it is not one's turn to play or the accidental exposure of a card, informally known as "bleeding."
In many official sets of rules for card games, the rules specifying the penalties for various infractions occupy more pages than the rules specifying how to play correctly. This is tedious but necessary for games that are played seriously. Players who intend to play a card game at a high level generally ensure before beginning that all agree on the penalties to be used. When playing privately, this will normally be a question of agreeing house rules. In a tournament, there will probably be a tournament director who will enforce the rules when required and arbitrate in cases of doubt.
If a player breaks the rules of a game deliberately, this is cheating. The rest of this section is therefore about accidental infractions, caused by ignorance, clumsiness, inattention, etc.
As the same game is played repeatedly among a group of players, precedents build up about how a particular infraction of the rules should be handled. For example, "Sheila just led a card when it wasn't her turn. Last week when Jo did that, we agreed ... etc." Sets of such precedents tend to become established among groups of players, and to be regarded as part of the house rules. Sets of house rules may become formalized, as described in the previous section. Therefore, for some games, there is a "proper" way of handling infractions of the rules. But for many games, without governing bodies, there is no standard way of handling infractions.
In many circumstances, there is no need for special rules dealing with what happens after an infraction. As a general principle, the person who broke a rule should not benefit from it, and the other players should not lose by it. An exception to this may be made in games with fixed partnerships, in which it may be felt that the partner(s) of the person who broke a rule should also not benefit. The penalty for an accidental infraction should be as mild as reasonable, consistent with there being a possible benefit to the person responsible.
Playing cards
Main article: Playing card
A Chinese playing card dated c. 1400 AD, Ming dynasty
The oldest surviving reference to the card game in world history is from the 9th century China, when the Collection of Miscellanea at Duyang, written by Tang-dynasty writer Su E, described Princess Tongchang (daughter of Emperor Yizong of Tang) playing the "leaf game" with members of the Wei clan (the family of the princess's husband) in 868 .[41][42][43] The Song dynasty statesman and historian Ouyang Xiu has noted that paper playing cards arose in connection to an earlier development in the book format from scrolls to pages.[41]
Mamluk playing card (king of cups), c.15th century
Playing cards first appeared in Europe in the last quarter of the 14th century.[44]: 35 The earliest European references speak of a Saracen or Moorish game called naib, and in fact an almost complete Mamluk Egyptian deck of 52 cards in a distinct oriental design has survived from around the same time, with the four suits swords, polo sticks, cups and coins and the ranks king, governor, second governor, and ten to one.[44]: 40f [45]
The 1430s in Italy saw the invention of the tarot deck, a full Latin-suited deck augmented by suitless cards with painted motifs that played a special role as trumps. Tarot card games are still played with (subsets of) these decks in parts of Central Europe. A full tarot deck contains 14 cards in each suit; low cards labeled 1–10, and court cards valet (jack), chevalier (cavalier/knight), dame (queen), and roi (king), plus the fool or excuse card, and 21 trump cards. In the 18th century the card images of the traditional Italian tarot decks became popular in cartomancy and evolved into "esoteric" decks used primarily for the purpose; today most tarot decks sold in North America are the occult type, and are closely associated with fortune telling. In Europe, "playing tarot" decks remain popular for games, and have evolved since the 18th century to use regional suits (spades, hearts, diamonds and clubs in France; leaves, hearts, bells and acorns in Germany) as well as other familiar aspects of the English-pattern pack such as corner card indices and "stamped" card symbols for non-court cards. Decks differ regionally based on the number of cards needed to play the games; the French tarot consists of the "full" 78 cards, while Germanic, Spanish and Italian Tarot variants remove certain values (usually low suited cards) from the deck, creating a deck with as few as 32 cards.
The French suits were introduced around 1480 and, in France, mostly replaced the earlier Latin suits of swords, clubs, cups and coins.[44]: 43 (which are still common in Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking countries as well as in some northern regions of Italy)[44]: 30f The suit symbols, being very simple and single-color, could be stamped onto the playing cards to create a deck, thus only requiring special full-color card art for the court cards. This drastically simplifies the production of a deck of cards versus the traditional Italian deck, which used unique full-color art for each card in the deck. The French suits became popular in English playing cards in the 16th century (despite historic animosity between France and England), and from there were introduced to British colonies including North America. The rise of Western culture has led to the near-universal popularity and availability of French-suited playing cards even in areas with their own regional card art.
In Japan, a distinct 48-card hanafuda deck is popular. It is derived from 16th-century Portuguese decks, after undergoing a long evolution driven by laws enacted by the Tokugawa shogunate attempting to ban the use of playing cards
The best-known deck internationally is the English pattern of the 52-card French deck, also called the International or Anglo-American pattern, used for such games as poker and contract bridge. It contains one card for each unique combination of thirteen ranks and the four French suits spades, hearts, diamonds, and clubs. The ranks (from highest to lowest in bridge and poker) are ace, king, queen, jack (or knave), and the numbers from ten down to two (or deuce). The trump cards and knight cards from the French playing tarot are not included.
Originally the term knave was more common than "jack"; the card had been called a jack as part of the terminology of All-Fours since the 17th century, but the word was considered vulgar. (Note the exclamation by Estella in Charles Dickens's novel Great Expectations: "He calls the knaves, Jacks, this boy!") However, because the card abbreviation for knave ("Kn") was so close to that of the king, it was very easy to confuse them, especially after suits and rankings were moved to the corners of the card in order to enable people to fan them in one hand and still see all the values. (The earliest known deck to place suits and rankings in the corner of the card is from 1693, but these cards did not become common until after 1864 when Hart reintroduced them along with the knave-to-jack change.) However, books of card games published in the third quarter of the 19th century evidently still referred to the "knave", and the term with this definition is still recognized in the United Kingdom.
Chinese mother-of-pearl gambling tokens used in scoring and bidding of card games.
In the 17th century, a French, five-trick, gambling game called Bête became popular and spread to Germany, where it was called La Bete and England where it was named Beast. It was a derivative of Triomphe and was the first card game in history to introduce the concept of bidding.[46]
Chinese handmade mother-of-pearl gaming counters were used in scoring and bidding of card games in the West during the approximate period of 1700–1840. The gaming counters would bear an engraving such as a coat of arms or a monogram to identify a family or individual. Many of the gaming counters also depict Chinese scenes, flowers or animals. Queen Charlotte is one prominent British individual who is known to have played with the Chinese gaming counters. Card games such as Ombre, Quadrille and Pope Joan were popular at the time and required counters for scoring. The production of counters declined after Whist, with its different scoring method, became the most popular card game in the West.[47]
Based on the association of card games and gambling, Pope Benedict XIV banned card games on October 17, 1750.[48]
See also
icon Games portal
Game of chance
Game of skill
R. F. Foster (games)
Henry Jones (writer) who wrote under the pseudonym "Cavendish"
John Scarne
Dice game
List of card games by number of cards
References
David Parlett (September 30, 2013). "Card Game". Encyclopedia Britannica. Archived from the original on September 13, 2018. Retrieved September 13, 2018.
Depaulis (1985), p. 75.
Dummett (1980), p. 173.
Dummett (1980), p. 173.
Pratesi, Franco (1989). "Italian Cards - New Discoveries". The Playing-Card. 18 (1, 2): 28–32, 33–38.
David Parlett, Oxford Dictionary of Card Games, pg. 300 Oxford University Press (1996) ISBN 0-19-869173-4
Regles dv Jev des Tarots at tarock.info. Retrieved 4 January 2023.
Depaulis (2002), pp. 313–316.
Vives, Juan Luis; Foster, Watson (1908). Tudor School-Boy Life. London: J.M. Dent & Company. pp. 185–197.
Maldonado, Juan; Smith, Warren; Colahan, Clark (2009). Spanish Humanism on the Verge of the Picaresque. Leuven: Leuven University Press. pp. 23–59.
Pratesi, Franco (1988). "Juan Maldonado: A Writer to be Remembered". The Playing-Card. 16 (4): 117–121.
Depaulis (1990), pp. 52–67.
Parlett (1990), p. 80.
Rabelais (1534), Ch. XXII.
Skelton (1522).
Florio (1591), p. 67.
Maw at parlettgames.uk. Retrieved 26 November 2022.
Noddy: Knavish ancestor of Cribbage at parlettgames.uk. Retrieved 26 November 2023.
Willughby, Francis. A Volume of Plaies. (Manuscript in the Middleton collection, University of Nottingham, shelfmark Li 113.) c1665-70.
McLeod (2007), p. 257.
Parlett (1991), p. 118.
Parlett (1991), pp. 88/89
Les jeux de hocs on the Academy of Forgotten Games website.
Dummett (1980), p. 264.
Classified Index of Card Games at pagat.com. Retrieved 29 December 2023.
Trick Taking Games at pagat.com. Retrieved 28 December 2023.
Beating games at pagat.com. Retrieved 29 December 2023.
Adding Games at pagat.com. Retrieved 29 December 2023.
"Card Games: Fishing Games". Pagat.com. March 6, 2011. Archived from the original on November 24, 2006. Retrieved January 28, 2012.
Parlett, David. The Penguin Book of Card Games. London: Penguin (2008), p. 405. ISBN 978-0-14-103787-5.
War Group at pagat.com. Retrieved 29 December 2023.
Climbing Games at pagat.com. Retrieved 29 December 2023.
Draw and Discard Games at pagat.com. Retrieved 29 December 2023.
Competitive Patience at pagat.com. Retrieved 29 December 2023.
Vying Games at pagat.com. Retrieved 29 December 2023.
Banking Games at pagat.com. Retrieved 29 December 2023.
Capturing Games at pagat.com. Retrieved 30 December 2023.
Combination Games at pagat.com. Retrieved 30 December 2023.
"Why Do Math?". www.whydomath.org. Archived from the original on December 27, 2019. Retrieved October 12, 2020.
"Ol ée la respondation de Talebot" in La Gente poitevinrie tout again racoutrie ou Tabelot bain, et bea (1572), cf. Jacques Pignon, éd., La Gente poitevinrie, a collection of texts in Poitevin patois of the 16th century, Paris, 1960, reprint. The Crèche, 2002, IV. Étienne Tabourot also mentions play in his "Amphibological Sonnet" (1570), cf. Bigarrures (1583), I, 6.
Temple, Robert K.G. (2007). The Genius of China: 3,000 Years of Science, Discovery, and Invention (3rd edition). London: André Deutsch, pp. 130–131. ISBN 978-0-233-00202-6.
Zhou, Songfang. "On the Story of Late Tang Poet Li He", Journal of the Graduates Sun Yat-sen University, 1997, Vol. 18, No. 3:31–35
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 Taipei: Caves Books, Ltd.(1986), Page 131
David Sidney Parlett (1990). The Oxford guide to card games. Internet Archive. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-214165-1.
Dummett, Michael; Abu-Deeb, Kamal (1973), "Some remarks on Mamluk playing cards", Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 63: 106–128, doi:10.2307/751160, JSTOR 751160, S2CID 192948205
"Euchre: history of, by David Parlett". www.parlettgames.uk. Archived from the original on May 4, 2019. Retrieved December 29, 2022.
"Collection: Chinese gaming counters - Archives at Yale". archives.yale.edu. Archived from the original on April 23, 2019. Retrieved April 23, 2019.
Dublin Gazette (1750). The Dublin Gazette (Number 26). Dublin: Richard James and John Butler, 1750. Context: "In the Edict lately published against all Games on the Cards, it is enacted, that the Penalty on Delinquents shall be a Fine of 500 Crowns ; but if any Persons of high Rank or Distinction are convicted of suffering or promoting Gaming of that Kind in their house, they shall incur the Pope's Indignation, and be liable to such arbitrary Punishment as to his'Holiness shall seem meet."
Bibliography
Depaulis, Thierry (1985). "Le Jeu de Cartes: Quelques Regles du Passe" in The Playing-Card. Vol. XIII (3). February 1985. ISSN 0305-2133 pp. 74–80.
Depaulis, Thierry (1990). "Pochspiel: an 'International' Card Game of the 15th Century – Part I" in The Playing-Card, Vol. 19, No. 2 (November 1990), pp. 52–67.
Florio, John (1591). Second Frutes. London: Woodcock.
Parlett, David (2007). "The origins of Euchre" in The Playing-Card, 35 (4), Apr–June 2007. ISSN 1752-671X pp. 255–261.
Parlett, David (1991). A History of Card Games, OUP, Oxford. ISBN 0-19-282905-X
* Skelton (1522). Why not to Court. Cited in the OED. See David Parlett's article: Laugh and Lie Down.
External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Card games.
International Playing Card Society
Rules for historic card games
Collection of rules to many card games
vte
Non trick-taking card games
ShufflingCuttingGlossary of card game terms
Adding
CribbageCostly coloursNinety-nineNoddy
Collecting
Beggar-my-neighbourEgyptian RatscrewMy Ship SailsNinety-nineOchse, leg dich!PigQuartetsSchlafmützeWar
Commerce
BragCommerceJames BondKempsMusSchwimmenStop the Bus
Comparing
Chase the AceCoucouCuccùGnavHöllfahrenHyppHexenspielKilleRanter-Go-RoundVogelspiel
Compendium
BarbuBauernfangenBonkenDavoserjazzDreegHerzelnKein StichKingLorumPochQuodlibetRosbiratschkaTrex
Draw and
discard
Bing rummyBuracoCanastaCariocaChinchónColonelConquianContinental RummyContract rummyDummy rummyGerman RummyGolfIndian rummyKalookiLiverpool rummyMilitairePenang rummyRobbers' rummyRummyGin rummyRuminoThirty-oneThree thirteenTonkTreppenromméViennese RummyYaniv500 rum
Fishing
BastraByggkasinoCassinoCiceraCuarentaEscobaEscopaPasurGo-StopMulleScopaSkwitzTablanetteZwicker
Matching
Go FishKings in the CornerLusti-Kartl'nNain JauneNewmarketPochSedmaSedmiceSlapjackSnip-Snap-Snorum
Shedding
BartokBig twoBrede MetteBurroCometCraitsCrazy EightsCheatDaifugōDou dizhuDupa biskupaDurakHahndreierHundJack Change ItLast CardMaoMau-MauOld maidOne-cardPaskahousuPresidentPusoy dosQuatorzeRabougeRed ninesRistiseiskaShitheadSpeedSpitSwitchTiến lênVändtia
{{Historical card games}} {{Patience}} {{Trick-taking card games}} {{Tarot and Tarock card games}}
vte
Trick-taking card games (list)
French packs
52 cards
(except where stated)
3-2-5 (30)3-5-8400500 (43)1000 (24)1001 (24)All FoursAuction bridgeBarbuBaśka (16)Bid whistBisca (40)Black LadyBlack MariaBlukeBonkenBostonBourréBridgeCall-ace WhistCinchClabber (24)ClagChlust (20)Court pieceCucumberFemkortForty-fivesFrench WhistGerman WhistGong ZhuHeartsHucklebuckKachufoolKingKnockout WhistKonter a Matt (24)Kop (16)KöpknackKnüffeln (48)LanterlooMizerkaNapoleonNinety-nineNorseman's KnockOh HellPedroPinochle (2x24)PitchPhatPolskpas (24)PriffePutRistikontraRödskäggShelemSheng jiSixty-threeSjavs (Danish) (20)Skærvindsel (28)SmearSpadesSpoil FiveStýrivolt (48)Sueca (40)TarneebThunee (24)Turkish KingTwenty-five (Spoil Five)Two-ten-jackViraWhistZwikken (20)
French packs
36 cards
AgramBräusBrusBrúsBruusBuraCatch the TenDappFrogHinderscheKnackMarjapussiRutersjuScharwenzelSix-Bid SoloSvängknackTappTarabishTrekortVierscheVoormsi
French packs
32 cards
304BalootBassadewitzBauerchenBauernheinrichBeloteBeziqueBierlachsBrandelnBruusChouineCoincheÉcartéEnfléEuchreFipsenFünf dazuHerzblattKaiserKlaberjass/BelaKlammernKlaverjasLetzterLetzter StichManilleMarjoletMistigriOfficers' SkatOma SkatPilottaPiquetPolignacPreferansPréférenceRamsSchwimmenSheepsheadSiebenschrämSjavsSkatSolo 66TausendundeinsTippenToepenTuppenTwenty-eightZwanzig abZwicken
German packs 36 cards
BauerntarockBavarian TarockBieten (33)BrusbartDobbmHaferltarockJaggln (33)Kratzen (33)MulatschakPerlaggen (33)Schnalzen (33)Württemberg Tarock
German packs
32 cards
(except where stated)
Bauernfangen (20)Bauernschnapsen (20)Bierkopf (20)Binokel (2x24)BlattlaBohemian SchneiderBohemian WattenBolachenDoppelkopf (2x24)Dreeg (24)Dreierschnapsen (20)ElfernGaigel (2x24)German SchafkopfGerman SoloGiltenGrasobernHerzelnHerzlaKein StichLampelnLorumLupfen (20)Lusti-Kartl'nMariášMatzlfangenMauschelnMuckenOfficers' SchafkopfQuodlibetRamschRamschelnRamsenRosbiratschkaRumpelRussian Schnapsen (24)SchafkopfSchnapsen (20)SedmaSedmiceSixty-Six (24)StichelnTrischettnWallachenWattenWendish SchafkopfUltiUnteransetzenZehnerlegen
Italian or Spanish packs
AluetteBestiaBotifarraBriscaBriscolaCalabresellaGiléJulepeTressetteTrucTruc y FlouTrucoTute
Swiss German packs
Jass (Chratze, Schieberjass, Hindersi-Jass)Kaiserspiel
Category {{Historical card games}} {{Non trick-taking card games}} {{Tarot and Tarock card games}}
vte
Tabletop games by type
Board game
Adventure board gameAmerigameCooperative board gameDeduction board gameEurogameRace game Cross and circle gameLegacy gameRunning-fight gameTables gameTile-based game DominoesChinese dominoesTrain game 18XX
Card game
Collectible card gameDeck-building gameDedicated deck card gameShedding-type gamesPatienceTarot card gamesTrick-taking game
Strategy game
Abstract strategy game Connection gameTafl gamesConstructible strategy gameMiniatures game Collectible miniatures gameWargame
Other
Dice gameMatching gameMegagameIcehouse piecesPaper-and-pencil gameSocial deduction gameTabletop role-playing game
Authority control databases Edit this at Wikidata
International
FAST 2
National
SpainFranceBnF dataGermanyIsraelUnited StatesLatviaCzech Republic
Other
NARA
Categories: Card gamesTabletop games
Gambling
Article
Talk
Read
View source
View history
Tools
Page semi-protected
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
"Gamble", "Gambler", "Betting", and "Bets" redirect here. For other uses, see Gamble (disambiguation), Gambler (disambiguation), Betting (disambiguation), and Bets (disambiguation).
Caravaggio, The Cardsharps (c. 1594), depicting card sharps.
Gambling (also known as betting or gaming) is the wagering of something of value ("the stakes") on a random event with the intent of winning something else of value, where instances of strategy are discounted. Gambling thus requires three elements to be present: consideration (an amount wagered), risk (chance), and a prize.[1] The outcome of the wager is often immediate, such as a single roll of dice, a spin of a roulette wheel, or a horse crossing the finish line, but longer time frames are also common, allowing wagers on the outcome of a future sports contest or even an entire sports season.
The term "gaming"[2] in this context typically refers to instances in which the activity has been specifically permitted by law. The two words are not mutually exclusive; i.e., a "gaming" company offers (legal) "gambling" activities to the public[3] and may be regulated by one of many gaming control boards, for example, the Nevada Gaming Control Board. However, this distinction is not universally observed in the English-speaking world. For instance, in the United Kingdom, the regulator of gambling activities is called the Gambling Commission (not the Gaming Commission).[4] The word gaming is used more frequently since the rise of computer and video games to describe activities that do not necessarily involve wagering, especially online gaming, with the new usage still not having displaced the old usage as the primary definition in common dictionaries. "Gaming" has also been used to circumvent laws against "gambling". The media and others have used one term or the other to frame conversations around the subjects, resulting in a shift of perceptions among their audiences.[5]
Gambling is also a major international commercial activity, with the legal gambling market totaling an estimated $335 billion in 2009.[6] In other forms, gambling can be conducted with materials that have a value, but are not real money. For example, players of marbles games might wager marbles, and likewise games of Pogs or Magic: The Gathering can be played with the collectible game pieces (respectively, small discs and trading cards) as stakes, resulting in a meta-game regarding the value of a player's collection of pieces.
History
[icon]
This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (July 2022)
Gambling dates back at least to the Paleolithic period, before written history. In Mesopotamia the earliest six-sided dice date to about 3000 BCE. However, they were based on astragali dating back thousands of years earlier. In China, gambling houses were widespread in the first millennium BCE, and betting on fighting animals was common. Lotto games and dominoes (precursors of Pai Gow) appeared in China as early as the 10th century.[7]
Playing cards appeared in the 9th century CE in China. Records trace gambling in Japan back at least as far as the 14th century.[8]
Poker, the most popular U.S. card game associated with gambling, derives from the Persian game As-Nas, dating back to the 17th century.[9]
The first known casino, the Ridotto, started operating in 1638 in Venice, Italy.[10]
Great Britain
Main articles: Gambling in the United Kingdom and History of gambling in the United Kingdom
Gambling has been a main recreational activity in Great Britain for centuries.[11] Queen Elizabeth I chartered a lottery that was drawn in 1569.[12] Horseracing has been a favorite theme for over three centuries.[13] It has been heavily regulated.[14] Historically much of the opposition comes from Nonconformist Protestants, and from social reformers.[15][16]
United States
Main article: Gambling in the United States
Gambling has been a popular activity in the United States for centuries.[17] It has also been suppressed by law in many areas for almost as long. By the early 20th century, gambling was almost uniformly outlawed throughout the U.S. and thus became a largely illegal activity, helping to spur the growth of the mafia and other criminal organizations.[18][19] The late 20th century saw a softening in attitudes towards gambling and a relaxation of laws against it.
Regulation
Gamblers in the Ship of Fools, 1494
"Players and courtesans under a tent" by Cornelis de Vos
Main article: Gambling law
Many jurisdictions, local as well as national, either ban gambling or heavily control it by licensing the vendors. Such regulation generally leads to gambling tourism and illegal gambling in the areas where it is not allowed. The involvement of governments, through regulation and taxation, has led to a close connection between many governments and gambling organizations, where legal gambling provides significant government revenue, such as in Monaco and Macau, China.
There is generally legislation requiring that gambling devices be statistically random, to prevent manufacturers from making some high-payoff results impossible. Since these high payoffs have very low probability, a house bias can quite easily be missed unless the devices are checked carefully.[20]
Most jurisdictions that allow gambling require participants to be above a certain age. In some jurisdictions, the gambling age differs depending on the type of gambling. For example, in many American states one must be over 21 to enter a casino, but may buy a lottery ticket after turning 18.[citation needed]
Insurance
Because contracts of insurance have many features in common with wagers, insurance contracts are often distinguished in law as agreements in which either party has an interest in the "bet-upon" outcome beyond the specific financial terms. e.g.: a "bet" with an insurer on whether one's house will burn down is not gambling, but rather insurance – as the homeowner has an obvious interest in the continued existence of their home independent of the purely financial aspects of the "bet" (i.e. the insurance policy). Nonetheless, both insurance and gambling contracts are typically considered aleatory contracts under most legal systems, though they are subject to different types of regulation.
Asset recovery
Under common law, particularly English Law (English unjust enrichment), a gambling contract may not give a casino bona fide purchaser status, permitting the recovery of stolen funds in some situations. In Lipkin Gorman v Karpnale Ltd, where a solicitor used stolen funds to gamble at a casino, the House of Lords overruled the High Court's previous verdict, adjudicating that the casino return the stolen funds less those subject to any change of position defence. U.S. Law precedents are somewhat similar.[21] For case law on recovery of gambling losses where the loser had stolen the funds see "Rights of owner of stolen money as against one who won it in gambling transaction from thief".[22]
An interesting question is what happens when the person trying to make recovery is the gambler's spouse, and the money or property lost was either the spouse's, or was community property. This was a minor plot point in a Perry Mason novel, The Case of the Singing Skirt, and it cites an actual case Novo v. Hotel Del Rio.[23]
Religious views
Max Kaur and religious leaders protest against gambling, Tallinn, Estonia.
Buddhism
Lord Buddha stated gambling as a source of destruction in Singalovada Sutra.
Hinduism
Ancient Hindu poems like the Gambler's Lament and the Mahabharata testify to the existence of gambling among ancient Indians, while highlighting its destructive impact.[where?] The text Arthashastra (c. 4th century BCE) recommends taxation and control of gambling.[24]
Judaism
Ancient Jewish authorities frowned on gambling, even disqualifying professional gamblers from testifying in court.[25]
Christianity
Catholicism
The Catholic Church holds the position that there is no moral impediment to gambling, so long as it is fair, all bettors have a reasonable chance of winning, there is no fraud involved, and the parties involved do not have actual knowledge of the outcome of the bet (unless they have disclosed this knowledge),[26] and as long as the following conditions are met: the gambler can afford to lose the bet, and stops when the limit is reached, and the motivation is entertainment and not personal gain leading to the "love of money"[27] or making a living.[28] In general, Catholic bishops have opposed casino gambling on the grounds that it too often tempts people into problem gambling or addiction, and has particularly negative effects on poor people; they sometimes also cite secondary effects such as increases in loan sharking, prostitution, corruption, and general public immorality.[29][30][31] Some parish pastors have also opposed casinos for the additional reason that they would take customers away from church bingo and annual festivals where games such as blackjack, roulette, craps, and poker are used for fundraising.[32] St. Thomas Aquinas wrote that gambling should be especially forbidden where the losing bettor is underage or otherwise not able to consent to the transaction.[33] Gambling has often been seen as having social consequences, as satirized by Balzac. For these social and religious reasons, most legal jurisdictions limit gambling, as advocated by Pascal.[34]
Protestantism
Gambling views among Protestants vary, with some either discouraging or forbidding their members from participation in gambling. Methodists, in accordance with the doctrine of outward holiness, oppose gambling which they believe is a sin that feeds on greed. Other denominations that discourage gambling are the United Methodist Church,[35] the Free Methodist Church,[36] the Evangelical Wesleyan Church,[37] the Salvation Army,[38] and the Church of the Nazarene.[39]
Other Protestants that oppose gambling include Mennonites, Schwarzenau Brethren,[40] Quakers,[41] the Christian Reformed Church in North America,[42] the Church of the Lutheran Confession,[43] the Southern Baptist Convention,[44] the Assemblies of God,[45] and the Seventh-day Adventist Church.[46]
Other Christian denominations
Other churches that oppose gambling include the Jehovah's Witnesses, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,[47] the Iglesia ni Cristo,[48] and the Members Church of God International.
Islam
There is a consensus among the ‘Ulema’ (Arabic: عُـلـمـاء, Scholars (of Islam)) that gambling is haraam (Arabic: حَـرام, sinful or forbidden). In assertions made during its prohibition, Muslim jurists describe gambling as being both un-Qur’anic, and as being generally harmful to the Muslim Ummah (Arabic: أُمَّـة, Community). The Arabic terminology for gambling is Maisir.[49]
They ask you about intoxicants and gambling. Say: 'In them both lies grave sin, though some benefit, to mankind. But their sin is more grave than their benefit.'
— Surah Al-Baqara 2:219
In parts of the world that implement full Shari‘ah, such as Aceh, punishments for Muslim gamblers can range up to 12 lashes or a one-year prison term and a fine for those who provide a venue for such practises.[50] Some Islamic nations prohibit gambling; most other countries regulate it.[51]
Bahá'í Faith
According to the Most Holy Book, paragraph 155, gambling is forbidden.
Types
Casino games
While almost any game can be played for money, and any game typically played for money can also be played just for fun, some games are generally offered in a casino setting.
Table games
Main article: Casino game § Table games
The Caesars Palace main fountain. The statue is a copy of the ancient Winged Victory of Samothrace.
A pachinko parlor in Tokyo, Japan
Mahjong tiles
Electronic gambling
RAY's Ruusu and Tuplapotti slot machines in Finland
Online roulette
Pachinko
Sic Bo
Slot machine
Video poker
Video bingo
Other gambling
Bingo
Keno
Non-casino games
Gambling games that take place outside of casinos include bingo (as played in the US and UK), dead pool, lotteries, pull-tab games and scratchcards, and Mahjong.
Other non-casino gambling games include:
Non-casino card games, including historical games like Basset, Ecarté, Lansquenet and Put. Technically, a gambling card game is one in which the cards are not actually played but simply bet on.[52]
Carnival Games such as The Razzle or Hanky Pank
Coin-tossing games such as Head and Tail, Two-up*
Confidence tricks such as Three-card Monte or the Shell game
Dice-based games, such as Backgammon, Liar's dice, Passe-dix, Hazard, Threes, Pig, or Mexico (or Perudo);
*Although coin tossing is not usually played in a casino, it has been known to be an official gambling game in some Australian casinos[53]
Fixed-odds betting
Main article: Fixed-odds betting
Fixed-odds betting and Parimutuel betting frequently occur at many types of sporting events, and political elections. In addition many bookmakers offer fixed odds on a number of non-sports related outcomes, for example the direction and extent of movement of various financial indices, the winner of television competitions such as Big Brother, and election results.[54] Interactive prediction markets also offer trading on these outcomes, with "shares" of results trading on an open market.
Parimutuel betting
Main article: Parimutuel betting
One of the most widespread forms of gambling involves betting on horse or greyhound racing. Wagering may take place through parimutuel pools, or bookmakers may take bets personally. Parimutuel wagers pay off at prices determined by support in the wagering pools, while bookmakers pay off either at the odds offered at the time of accepting the bet; or at the median odds offered by track bookmakers at the time the race started.
Sports betting
Main article: Sports betting
Tokyo Racecourse in Tokyo, Japan
Betting on team sports has become an important service industry in many countries. Before the advent of the internet, millions of people played the football pools every week in the United Kingdom. In addition to organized sports betting, both legal and illegal, there are many side-betting games played by casual groups of spectators, such as NCAA basketball tournament Bracket Pools, Super Bowl Squares, Fantasy Sports Leagues with monetary entry fees and winnings, and in-person spectator games like Moundball.
Virtual sports
Main article: Virtual sports
Based on Sports Betting, Virtual Sports are fantasy and never played sports events made by software that can be played every time without wondering about external things like weather conditions.
Arbitrage betting
Main article: Arbitrage betting
Arbitrage betting is a theoretically risk-free betting system in which every outcome of an event is bet upon so that a known profit will be made by the bettor upon completion of the event regardless of the outcome. Arbitrage betting is a combination of the ancient art of arbitrage trading and gambling, which has been made possible by the large numbers of bookmakers in the marketplace, creating occasional opportunities for arbitrage.
Other types of betting
One can also bet with another person that a statement is true or false, or that a specified event will happen (a "back bet") or will not happen (a "lay bet") within a specified time. This occurs in particular when two people have opposing but strongly held views on truth or events. Not only do the parties hope to gain from the bet, they place the bet also to demonstrate their certainty about the issue. Some means of determining the issue at stake must exist. Sometimes the amount bet remains nominal, demonstrating the outcome as one of principle rather than of financial importance.
Betting exchanges allow consumers to both back and lay at odds of their choice. Similar in some ways to a stock exchange, a bettor may want to back a horse (hoping it will win) or lay a horse (hoping it will lose, effectively acting as bookmaker).
Spread betting allows gamblers to wagering on the outcome of an event where the pay-off is based on the accuracy of the wager, rather than a simple "win or lose" outcome. For example, a wager can be based on the when a point is scored in the game in minutes and each minute away from the prediction increases or reduces the payout.
Staking systems
Main article: Betting strategy
Many betting systems have been created in an attempt to "beat the house" but no system can make a mathematically unprofitable bet in terms of expected value profitable over time. Widely used systems include:
Card counting – Many systems exist for blackjack to keep track of the ratio of ten values to all others; when this ratio is high the player has an advantage and should increase the amount of their bets. Keeping track of cards dealt confers an advantage in other games as well.
Due-column betting – A variation on fixed profits betting in which the bettor sets a target profit and then calculates a bet size that will make this profit, adding any losses to the target.
Fixed profits – the stakes vary based on the odds to ensure the same profit from each winning selection.
Fixed stakes – a traditional system of staking the same amount on each selection.
Kelly – the optimum level to bet to maximize your future median bank level.
Martingale – A system based on staking enough each time to recover losses from previous bet(s) until one wins.
Other uses of the term
This section possibly contains original research. Please improve it by verifying the claims made and adding inline citations. Statements consisting only of original research should be removed. (August 2010) (Learn how and when to remove this template message)
Gloria Mundi, or The Devil addressing the sun, a cartoon showing the British politician Charles James Fox standing on a roulette wheel perched atop a globe showing England and continental Europe. The implication is that his penniless state, indicated by turned-out pockets, is due to gambling.
Many risk-return choices are sometimes referred to colloquially as "gambling."[55] Whether this terminology is acceptable is a matter of debate:
Emotional or physical risk-taking, where the risk-return ratio is not quantifiable (e.g., skydiving, campaigning for political office, asking someone for a date, etc.)
Insurance is a method of shifting risk from one party to another. Insurers use actuarial methods to calculate appropriate premiums, which is similar to calculating gambling odds. Insurers set their premiums to obtain a long term positive expected return in the same manner that professional gamblers select which bets to make. While insurance is sometimes distinguished from gambling by the requirement of an insurable interest, the equivalent in gambling is simply betting against one's own best interests (e.g., a sports coach betting against his own team to mitigate the financial repercussions of a losing season).
Situations where the possible return is of secondary importance to the wager/purchase (e.g. entering a raffle in support of a charitable cause)
Investments are also usually not considered gambling, although some investments can involve significant risk. Examples of investments include stocks, bonds and real estate. Starting a business can also be considered a form of investment. Investments are generally not considered gambling when they meet the following criteria:
Economic utility
Positive expected returns (at least in the long term)
Underlying value independent of the risk being undertaken
Some speculative investment activities are particularly risky, but are sometimes perceived to be different from gambling:
Foreign currency exchange (forex) transactions
Prediction markets
Securities derivatives, such as options or futures, where the value of the derivative is dependent on the value of the underlying asset at a specific point in time (typically the derivative's associated expiration date)
Negative consequences
Main article: Problem gambling
Problem gambling has multiple symptoms. Gamblers often play again to try to win back money they have lost, and some gamble to relieve feelings of helplessness and anxiety.[56]
In the United Kingdom, the Advertising Standards Authority has censured several betting firms for advertisements disguised as news articles suggesting falsely that a person had cleared debts and paid for medical expenses by gambling online. The firms face possible fines.[57]
A 2020 study of 32 countries found that the greater the amount of gambling activity in a given country, the more volatile that country's stock-market prices are.[58]
A levant or levanting characterises the act of absconding following the outcome of a bet.[59]
Psychological biases
Gamblers may exhibit a number of cognitive and motivational biases that distort the perceived odds of events and that influence their preferences for gambles.
Preference for likely outcomes. When gambles are selected through a choice process – when people indicate which gamble they prefer from a set of gambles (e.g., win/lose, over/under) – people tend to prefer to bet on the outcome that is more likely to occur. Bettors tend to prefer to bet on favorites in athletic competitions, and sometimes will accept even bets on favorites when offered more favorable bets on the less likely outcome (e.g., an underdog team).[60]
Optimism/Desirability Bias. Gamblers also exhibit optimism, overestimating the likelihood that desired events will occur. Fans of NFL underdog teams, for example, will prefer to bet on their teams at even odds than to bet on the favorite, whether the bet is $5 or $50.[61]
Reluctance to bet against (hedge) desired outcomes.[62] People are reluctant to bet against desired outcomes that are relevant to their identity. Gamblers exhibit reluctance to bet against the success of their preferred U.S. presidential candidates and Major League Baseball, National Football League, National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) basketball, and NCAA hockey teams. More than 45% of NCAA fans in Studies 5 and 6, for instance, turned down a "free" real $5 bet against their team. From a psychological perspective, such a "hedge" creates an interdependence dilemma – a motivational conflict between a short-term monetary gain and the long-term benefits accrued from feelings of identification with and loyalty to a position, person, or group whom the bettor desires to succeed. In economic terms, this conflicted decision can be modeled as a trade-off between the outcome utility gained by hedging (e.g., money) and the diagnostic costs it incurs (e.g., disloyalty). People make inferences about their beliefs and identity from their behavior. If a person is uncertain about an aspect of their identity, such as the extent to which they values a candidate or team, hedging may signal to them that they are not as committed to that candidate or team as they originally believed. If the diagnostic cost of this self-signal and the resulting identity change are substantial, it may outweigh the outcome utility of hedging, and they may reject even very generous hedges.[62]
Ratio bias. Gamblers will prefer gambles with worse odds that are drawn from a large sample (e.g., drawing one red ball from an urn containing 89 red balls and 11 blue balls) to better odds that are drawn from a small sample (drawing one red ball from an urn containing 9 red balls and one blue ball).[63]
Gambler's fallacy/positive recency bias.
See also
Casino
Faro Ladies
Gambler's conceit
Gambler's fallacy
Gambler's ruin
Gambling mathematics
Gaming Research Center
Gambling in the United States
History of gambling in the United States
History of gambling in the United Kingdom
List of bets
Lottery
Mobile gambling
Online gambling
References
Rose, I. Nelson; Loeb, Robert A. (1998). Blackjack and the Law (1st ed.). Oakland, CA: RGE Pub. p. 109. ISBN 978-0-910575-08-9.
"Definition as Gaming". United Kingdom Office of Public Sector Information. Retrieved 22 September 2012.
Humphrey, Chuck. "Gambling Law US". Gambling-Law-US.com. Archived from the original on 5 May 2016. Retrieved 22 September 2012.
"UK Gambling Commission". Gamblingcommission.gov.uk. Retrieved 22 September 2012.
"Gambling or Gaming, Does it Matter". World Casino Directory. 2 December 2019. Retrieved 13 December 2019.
"You bet". The Economist. 8 July 2010. Archived from the original on 8 December 2019.
Schwartz, David (2013). Roll The Bones: The History of Gambling. Winchester Books. ISBN 978-0-615-84778-8.
Murdoch, James (1926). A History of Japan. Vol. 3 (reprint ed.). London: Psychology Press (published 1903). pp. 325–326. ISBN 978-0-415-15417-8. Retrieved 6 April 2018. Many Japanese are naturally prone to gambling; in the old Kyoto court the vice was rife, and in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries samurai would often stake their arms, armour, and horse trappings on a cast of the dice, even on the eve of a battle, and so have to go into action in incomplete panoplies, and sometimes with no armour at all. In Tokugawa times the vice did not reach this extent among the samurai, but it became common in Yedo and continued to be so throughout the history of the city.
Wilkins, Sally (2002). Sports and Games of Medieval Cultures. Greenwood. ISBN 978-0-313-36079-4.
Thomassen, Bjørn (2014). Liminality and the Modern: Living Through the In-Between. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd. p. 160. ISBN 978-1-4094-6080-0.
Roger Munting, An economic and social history of gambling in Britain and the USA. (Manchester UP, 1996).
Brenner, R.; Brenner, G.A.; Brenner, G.A. (1990). Gambling and Speculation: A Theory, a History, and a Future of Some Human Decisions. Cambridge University Press. p. 10. ISBN 978-0-521-38180-2. Retrieved 12 March 2023.
Mike Huggins, Flat racing and British society, 1790-1914: A social and economic history (Routledge, 2014).
David Forrest, "An economic and social review of gambling in Great Britain." Journal of Gambling Business and Economics 7.3 (2013): 1-33.
Roger Munting, "Social opposition to gambling in Britain: a historical overview." International Journal of the History of Sport 10.3 (1993): 295-312.
Mike Huggins, "Betting, sport and the British, 1918-1939." Journal of Social History (2007): 283-306. Online[dead link]
Roger Munting, An economic and social history of gambling in Britain and the USA. (Manchester U. Press, 1996).
"History of Gambling in the United States". Gambling in California. California State Library. March 1997. Archived from the original on 8 October 2009.
E.g., Constitution of Louisiana, 1974, Art. VII, Sec. 6(B).
"Nevada Gaming Control Board : Home". Retrieved 5 September 2016.
See 38 Am. Jur. 2d Gambling § 162.
Annotation, 44 A.L.R.2d 1242.
141 Cal. 2d 304, 295 P.2d 576 (3d Dist. 1956) (wife entitled to recover husband's gambling losses on the ground that he had made a gift of community property without her written consent); see also 38 Am. Jur. 2d Gambling § 175 (statutory provisions allowing third parties to recover gambling losses).
Bose, M. L. (1998). Social And Cultural History of Ancient India (revised & Enlarged ed.). Concept Publishing Company. p. 179. ISBN 978-81-7022-598-0.
Berel Wein. "Gambling". torah.org. Archived from the original on 16 June 2010. Retrieved 20 July 2010.
Kucharek, Rev. Cass (1974). To settle your conscience a layman's guide to Catholic moral theology. Our Sunday Visitor. ISBN 978-0-87973-877-8.
Moran, Dylan. "Is Gambling a Mortal Sin in the Bible? | tech-life-game-news". Christianpost.com. Archived from the original on 26 May 2016. Retrieved 30 May 2016.
"Is Gambling a Sin?". 2 January 2013.
"ADOM :: Florida bishops oppose expanding casino gambling". Retrieved 5 September 2016.
Mike Latona. "State's bishops oppose casino expansion". Catholic Courier. Archived from the original on 11 June 2016.
"Kentucky bishops urge opposition to casino gambling : News Headlines". Retrieved 5 September 2016.
"Catholic bishops oppose casino idea". Retrieved 5 September 2016.
Poitras, Geoffrey (2016). Equity Capital: From Ancient Partnerships to Modern Exchange Traded Funds. Routledge. p. 98. ISBN 9781317591030.
D. Adamson. "Blaise Pascal – Mathematician, Physicist and Thinker". Palgrave Macmillan. Archived from the original on 11 September 2015. Retrieved 5 September 2016.
"Book of Resolutions: Gambling".
"The Free Methodist Church (UK) | Why we don't encourage gambling". Archived from the original on 18 June 2018. Retrieved 25 August 2017.
The Discipline of the Evangelical Wesleyan Church. Evangelical Wesleyan Church. 2015. pp. 60–61.
"Why Don't Salvationists Drink, Smoke or Gamble?" Water Beach and Soham Salvation Army Community Church (WaterBeachSalvationArmy.org.uk). Archived 13 February 2016.
"The Church of the Nazarene, Doctrinal and Ethical Positions".
Dunkard Brethren Church Polity. Dunkard Brethren Church. 1 November 2021. p. 8.
"Quaker View of Gambling".
"Gambling". 26 June 2012.
"Gambling".
"Southern Baptist Convention > Resolution on Gambling". Archived from the original on 18 June 2018. Retrieved 25 August 2017.
"Gambling and Lotteries".
"Seventh-Day Adventist Church Position On Gambling". St. Vincent Times. 28 February 2019. Retrieved 28 September 2022.
"Gambling". churchofjesuschrist.org. Intellectual Reserve, Inc. Retrieved 14 May 2018.
"The Unofficial Site of the Iglesia ni Cristo".
Morrison, Rod (2012). The Principles of Project Finance. p. 50.
Feener, Michael (2013). Sharia and Social Engineering. p. 145.
"International Association of Gaming Regulators: Members". Archived from the original on 16 November 2012.
Parlett, David (1991). A History of Card Games. Oxford, NY: OUP. p. 324.
"The Game of Two up". Gambling Info. Archived from the original on 29 August 2012. Retrieved 22 September 2012.
"US election betting backs Bush". ABC.net. 28 October 2004. Retrieved 22 September 2012.
"Gambling Concepts And Nomenclature" (PDF). Archived (PDF) from the original on 8 March 2003.
"Symptoms and causes". Mayo Clinic.
Betting firms could be fined over ads 'targeting vulnerable people' The Guardian
Blau, Benjamin M.; Whitby, Ryan J. (1 September 2020). "Gambling activity and stock price volatility: A cross-country analysis". Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance. 27: 100338. doi:10.1016/j.jbef.2020.100338. ISSN 2214-6350. S2CID 219415559.
"levant". Oxford English Dictionary (Online ed.). Oxford University Press. (Subscription or participating institution membership required.)
Simmons, Joseph P.; Nelson, Leif D. (2006). "Intuitive confidence: Choosing between intuitive and nonintuitive alternatives". Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. 135 (3): 409–428. CiteSeerX 10.1.1.138.4507. doi:10.1037/0096-3445.135.3.409. PMID 16846272.
Simmons, Joseph P.; Massey, Cade (2012). "Is optimism real?". Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. 141 (4): 630–634. doi:10.1037/a0027405. PMID 22329753.
Morewedge, Carey K.; Tang, Simone; Larrick, Richard P. (12 October 2016). "Betting Your Favorite to Win: Costly Reluctance to Hedge Desired Outcomes". Management Science. 64 (3): 997–1014. doi:10.1287/mnsc.2016.2656. ISSN 0025-1909.
Pacini, Rosemary; Epstein, Seymour (June 1999). "The relation of rational and experiential information processing styles to personality, basic beliefs, and the ratio-bias phenomenon". Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 76 (6): 972–987. doi:10.1037/0022-3514.76.6.972. PMID 10402681.
Further reading
Chambers, Kerry. Gambling for profit: Lotteries, gaming machines, and casinos in cross-national focus (U of Toronto press, 2011).
Ferentzy, Peter, and Nigel Turner. "Gambling and organized crime-A review of the literature." Journal of Gambling Issues 23 (2009): 111–155.
Ferentzy, Peter, and Nigel E. Turner. A history of problem gambling (Springer-Verlag, 2013) Archived 4 November 2018 at the Wayback Machine
Haller, Mark H. "The changing structure of American gambling in the twentieth century." Journal of Social Issues 35.3 (1979): 87–114.
Richard, Brian. "Diffusion of an economic development policy innovation: Explaining the international spread of casino gambling." Journal of Gambling Studies 26.2 (2010): 287–300. Online
Schwartz, David G. Roll The Bones: The History of Gambling (2006), scholarly history with global perspective excerpt
External links
Look up gambling in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
Wikiquote has quotations related to Gambling.
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Gambling.
Gambling sites at Curlie
Center for Gaming Research – at University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Institute for the Study of Gambling and Commercial Gaming at the University of Nevada, Reno
vte
Gambling
Gambling terminology
Venues
Casino ListOnline casinoCardroomRacinoRiverboat casino
Science
Mathematics
Gambling mathematicsMathematics of bookmakingPoker probability
Strategies
Advantage gambling Card countingDice controlAsian handicapDue Column bettingLabouchère systemMartingale
By region
Africa
AngolaNigeriaSouth Africa
Asia
CambodiaChina Hong KongMacauIndiaJapanPakistanPhilippines ManilaRussiaSingaporeTaiwanThailandTurkeyVietnam
Europe
EstoniaFranceItalyNorwayRussiaTurkeyUkraineUnited Kingdom
North America
MexicoUnited StatesCanada QuebecOntarioBCWestern CanadaAtlantic Canada
Oceania
AustraliaNew Zealand
South America
Brazil
Games
Casino gameGame of chanceGame of skillList of bets
Issues
Gaming lawProblem gambling
Category Commons Wiktionary WikiProject
Authority control databases Edit this at Wikidata
National
GermanyIsraelUnited StatesJapan
Other
Historical Dictionary of SwitzerlandNARA
Category: Gambling