Playing card – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A playing card is a piece of specially prepared heavy paper, thin cardboard, plastic-coated paper, cotton-paper blend, or thin plastic, marked with distinguishing motifs and used as one of a set for playing card games. Playing cards are typically palm-sized for convenient handling.

A complete set of cards is called a pack (UK English), deck (US English), or set (Universal); and the subset of cards held at one time by a player during a game is commonly called a hand. A deck of cards may be used for playing a variety of card games, with varying elements of skill and chance, some of which are played for money. Playing cards are also used for illusions, cardistry, building card structures, cartomancy and memory sport.

The front (or "face") of each card carries markings that distinguish it from the other cards in the deck and determine its use under the rules of the game being played. The back of each card is identical for all cards in any particular deck, and usually of a single color or formalized design. Usually every card will be smooth; however, some decks have braille to allow blind people to read the card number and suit. The backs of playing cards are sometimes used for advertising.[1] For most games, the cards are assembled into a deck, and their order is randomized by shuffling.

Playing cards were invented in Imperial China.[2][3][4] They were found in China as early as the 9th century during the Tang Dynasty (618907).[5][6][7] The first reference to card games dates from the 9th century, 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" in 868 with members of the Wei clan, the family of the princess' husband.[4][8][9]:131 The Song Dynasty (9601279) scholar Ouyang Xiu (10071072) asserted that playing cards and card games existed at least since the mid-Tang Dynasty and associated their invention with the simultaneous development of using sheets or pages instead of paper rolls as a writing medium.[3][4] The first known book on cards called Yezi Gexi was allegedly written by a Tang era woman, and was commented on by Chinese writers of subsequent dynasties.[3]

By the 11th century, playing cards could be found throughout the Asian continent.[9]:309 During the Ming Dynasty (13681644), characters from novels such as the Water Margin were widely featured on the faces of playing cards.[9]:132

Ancient Chinese "money cards" have four suits: coins (or cash), strings of coins (which may have been misinterpreted as sticks from crude drawings), myriads (of coins or of strings), and tens of myriads (a myriad is 10,000). These were represented by ideograms, with numerals of 29 in the first three suits and numerals 19 in the "tens of myriads". Wilkinson suggests that the first cards may have been actual paper currency which were both the tools of gaming and the stakes being played for,[2] as in trading card games. The designs on modern Mahjong tiles likely evolved from those earliest playing cards. However, it may be that the first deck of cards ever printed was a Chinese domino deck, in whose cards all 21 combinations of a pair of dice are depicted. In Kuei-t'ien-lu, a Chinese text redacted in the 11th century, domino cards were printed during the Tang Dynasty, contemporary to the first printed books. The Chinese word pi () is used to describe both paper cards and gaming tiles.

Playing cards first entered Europe in the early 14th century, probably from Mamluk Egypt, with suits (sets of cards with matching designs) very similar to the tarot suits of Swords, Staves, Cups and Coins (also known as disks or pentacles), and which are still used in traditional Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese decks.[10] The first documentary evidence is a document written in Vitoria-Gasteiz (now Spain) in 1334, in which the Knights of the Band are categorically prohibited from playing cards.[11] Their presence is attested in Catalonia in 1371.[12] Wide use of playing cards in Europe can, with some certainty, be traced from 1377 onwards.[13]

The Mameluke deck contained 52 cards comprising four "suits:" polo sticks, coins, swords, and cups. Each suit contained ten "spot" cards (cards identified by the number of suit symbols or "pips" they show) and three "court" cards named malik (King), n'ib malik (Viceroy or Deputy King), and thn n'ib (Second or Under-Deputy). The Mameluke court cards showed abstract designs not depicting persons (at least not in any surviving specimens), though they did bear the names of military officers.

A complete pack of Mameluke playing cards was discovered by Leo Mayer in the Topkap Palace, Istanbul, in 1939.[14] This particular complete pack was not made before 1400, but the complete deck was matched to a privately owned fragment dated to the 12th or 13th century. It is not a complete deck, but there are cards of three packs of the same style.[15]

It is not known whether these cards influenced the design of the Indian cards used for the game of Ganjifa, or whether the Indian cards may have influenced these. Regardless, the Indian cards have many distinctive features: they are round, generally hand painted with intricate designs, and comprise more than four suitsoften as many as thirty two, like a deck in the Deutsches Spielkarten-Museum, painted in the Mewar, a city in Rajasthan, between the 18th and 19th century. Decks used to play have from eight up to twenty suits.

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Playing card - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia