As we look towards the future, it’s clear that card games will continue to captivate and entertain people of all ages. When it comes to games, there’s nothing quite so ubiquitous nor so versatile as a deck of playing cards. Depending on how you count, there are thousands of different games that can be played with a standard deck. On a recent journey into the rabbit hole that is the internet I started to look at the history of playing cards in general. The traditional deck of playing cards we know today consists of four suits—hearts, diamonds, clubs, and spades—and numbered face cards within each suit. Generally, one standard deck consists of 52 cards, but variations are possible, especially when it comes to Joker cards.
When you start reading up on the history of playing cards, the first thing you notice is that no one is really sure exactly when or where they came from. Current scholarship suggests that card games and playing cards probably originated in Asia, with references to the “leaf” game in China, which could have been played with paper cards, as far back as the Tang Dynasty around the 9th century CE. But some sources suggest the leaf game could have been played with pages from books, or even paper currency instead of special cards.By the 11th century, playing cards made their way across the world and into Egypt. The oldest known surviving playing cards date from the 12th and 13th centuries from this region.
For Jacks, spades are Ogier the Dane, hearts is La Hire, diamonds is Hector, and clubs is Judas Maccabeus or Lancelot. Though these are the common people symbolized with the face cards in a deck, there are variations based on where the deck of cards is from and when it was created. For instance, the jack of hearts could be one of two people, depending on who created the deck of cards and what would be more important for them. Today, there is considerable commerce in the design, printing, and distribution of custom card decks.
Climbing games
They have travelled from China via India and the Middle East, and specifically with the Mamluks of Egypt. Cards were intricately painted using herbal remedies of the time and even held important planting information and architectural data. As the Dark Ages threatened the keeping and teaching of any unapproved information, books were being destroyed and great libraries, like the one in Alexandria, were burned to the ground. Playing cards can also be found in the Bella C. Landauer Collection of Advertising and Business Ephemera (PR 031). This collection should be cited as Playing Card and Game Collection, PR 115, Department of Prints, Photographs, and Architectural Collections, The New-York Historical Society.
Matching games
Plain backs easily pick up smudges, which “mark” the cards and make them useless to gamblers. By contrast, pattern-backed cards can withstand wear and tear without betraying a cardholder’s secrets. The earliest known playing card with a date written on it is from 1546. French cards from before the Revolution in 1789 show full-card depictions of Kings, Queens, and Jacks. When the Monarchy fell, kings and queens were no longer popular, and the figures were de-crowned and became representative of democratic ideas like liberty and equality.
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. 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.
The game quickly spread across the United States, becoming a staple of saloons and riverboat casinos. This 52-card deck quickly became popular across Europe and then the rest of the world. In the United States, it became the standard deck used in poker, which was first played in the early 19th century. It seems wholly possible, though unproven, that playing cards were introduced to Europe through bored soldiers during the Crusades. Those Mamluk cards in Istanbul, for example, are basically identical in arrangement to modern Spanish cards, which makes sense, given that Granada was literally an emirate until 1492.
The development of card design
The Knaves were commonly designated as La Hire (Hearts), Charlemagne’s knight mtg card Ogier (Spades), Hector the hero of Troy (Diamonds), and King Arthur’s knight Lancelot (Clubs). Many are identified as “Le Normand Style” after a deck named for Napoleon’s personal fortune teller. These cards contain a small image of a playing card in the upper center of each card, with a number above. Tarot was a game invented in Italy, although tarot cards are today used for fortune telling. In many cases, both in Europe and America, political card decks were issued close on the heels of the depicted event.
The Joker was initially referred to as “the best bower”, which is terminology that originates in the popular trick-taking game of euchre, which was popular in the mid-19th century, and refers to the highest trump card. It is an innovation from around 1860 that designated a trump card that beat both the otherwise highest ranking right bower and left bower. A variation of poker around 1875 is the first recorded instance of the Joker being used as a wild card.
The earliest reference to the Joker as a wild card in poker is from 1875.Today, the 52-card deck is the most popular, but other variations with different numbers of cards or different suits are regionally popular for different types of games. Educated guesses have made links to the cards, suits, and icons of 12th century and even older cards in China, India, Korea, Persia, or Egypt, which may have been introduced to Europe by Arabs. Some scholars believe that playing cards were invented in China during the Tang dynasty around the 9th century AD. There does seem to be evidence of some kinds of games involving playing cards (and drinking!) from this time onward, including cards with icons representing coins, which also appear as icons on playing cards later in Western Europe. If correct, it would place the origins of playing cards before 1000AD, and it would see them as originating alongside or even from tile games like dominoes and mahjong.
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. 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. The game, a refinement of the Persian game “as nas”, takes its name from a similar French game, “poque”. Now obsolete, the game spawned many games such as euchre, whist and bridge.
Post-revolutionary French authorities ban the depictions of royalty on playing cards. Kings, queens and jacks became liberties, equalities and fraternities. This stands for 12 years until Napoleon comes to power and tells them not to be so silly. Other theories suggest early Islam as the originator of playing cards, and others give the honor to the ancient Celtic druid tradition. Druidry has a bardic focus, meaning the spoken word is valued more highly than writing; so the ancient texts of druidry have a uniquely powerful and magical juxtaposition with the culture they were created in. It is said to have originated in New Orleans in the early 19th century, as a blend of various card games from Europe.
Often the front (face) and back of each card has a finish to make handling easier. As card games spread across Europe, different regions developed their own styles and designs. It wasn’t until the late 17th century that the French introduced the standardized 52-card deck that is widely used today.