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Inplaying cards, asuit is one of the categories into which the cards of a deck are divided. Most often, each card bears one of severalpips (symbols) showing to which suit it belongs; the suit may alternatively or additionally be indicated by the color printed on the card. The rank for each card is determined by the number of pips on it, except onface cards. Ranking indicates which cards within a suit are better, higher or more valuable than others, whereas there is no order between the suits unless defined in the rules of a specificcard game. In most decks, there is exactly one card of any given rank in any given suit. A deck may include special cards that belong to no suit, often calledjokers.
While English-speaking countries traditionally use cards with theFrench suits ofClubs,Spades,Hearts andDiamonds, many other countries have their own traditional suits. Much of central Europe usesGerman suited cards with suits ofAcorns (Clubs),Leaves (Spades),Hearts (Hearts) andBells (Diamonds); Spain and parts of Italy and South America useSpanish suited cards with their suits ofSwords (Spades),Batons (Clubs),Cups (Hearts) andCoins (Diamonds); German Switzerland usesSwiss suited cards with Acorns (Clubs),Shields (Hearts), yellowRoses (Spades) and Bells (Diamonds); and many parts of Italy useItalian suited cards which have the same suits but different patterns compared with Spanish suited cards. Asian countries such as China and Japan also have their own traditional suits.Tarot card packs have a set of distinct picture cards alongside the traditional four suits.
Modern Western playing cards are generally divided into two or three general suit-systems. The older Latin suits are subdivided into theItalian andSpanish suit-systems. The younger Germanic suits are subdivided into theGerman andSwiss suit-systems. TheFrench suits are a derivative of the German suits but are generally considered a separate system.[1][2]
The earliestcard games weretrick-taking games and the invention of suits increased the level of strategy and depth in these games. A card of one suit cannot beat a card from another regardless of its rank. The concept of suits predates playing cards and can be found in Chinese dice and domino games such asTien Gow.
Chinese money-suited cards are believed to be the oldest ancestor to the Latin suit system. The money-suit system is based ondenominations of currency:Coins,Strings of Coins,Myriads of Strings (or of coins), andTens of Myriads. Old Chinese coins had holes in the middle to allow them to be strung together. A string of coins could easily be misinterpreted as a stick to those unfamiliar with them.
By then the Islamic world had spread intoCentral Asia and had contacted China, and had adopted playing cards. The Muslims renamed the suit of myriads as cups; this may have been due to seeing a Chinese character for "myriad" (万) upside-down. The Chinese numeral character for Ten (十) on the Tens of Myriads suit may have inspired the Muslim suit of swords.[3] Another clue linking these Chinese, Muslim, and European cards are the ranking of certain suits. In many early Chinese games likeMadiao, the suit of coins was in reverse order so that the lower ones beat the higher ones. In the Indo-Persian game ofGanjifa, half the suits were also inverted, including a suit of coins. This was also true for the European games ofTarot andOmbre. The inverting of suits had no purpose in terms of play but was an artifact from the earliest games.
These Turko-Arabic cards, calledKanjifa, used the suits coins, clubs, cups, and swords, but the clubs represented polo sticks; Europeans changed that suit, aspolo was an obscure sport to them.
The Latin suits are coins, clubs, cups, and swords. They are the earliest suit-system in Europe, and were adopted from the cards imported fromMamluk Egypt andMoorish Granada in the 1370s.
There are four types of Latin suits: Italian, Spanish, Portuguese,[a] and an extinct archaic type.[4][5] The systems can be distinguished by the pips of their long suits: swords and clubs.
Despite a long history of trade with China,Japan was not introduced to playing cards until the arrival of the Portuguese in the 1540s.[c] Early locally made cards,Karuta, were very similar to Portuguese decks. Increasing restrictions by theTokugawa shogunate on gambling, card playing, and general foreign influence, resulted in theHanafuda deck that today is used most often for fishing-type games and the Komatsufuda andKabufuda decks that are used for gambling. In hanafuda, the role of rank and suit in organizing cards became switched, so the deck has 12 suits, each representing a month of the year, and each suit has 4 cards, most often two normal, one Ribbon and one Special (though August, November and December each differ uniquely from this convention). In komatsufuda and kabufuda, the designs of the suits became much more abstract. The latter much moreso to the point where the suit does not matter (only rank) and the face cards indistinguishable; thus becoming a single-suited deck with ranks 1-10 and the designs quadruplicated. Unsun karuta did not face the same restrictions and instead developed an additional suit and additional ranks.
During the 15th-century, manufacturers in German speaking lands experimented with various new suit systems to replace the Latin suits. One early deck had five suits, the Latin ones with an extra suit of shields.[10] The Swiss-Germans developed their own suits of shields, roses, acorns, and bells around 1450.[11] Instead of roses and shields, the Germans settled with hearts and leaves around 1460. The French derived their suits oftrèfles (clovers or clubs♣),carreaux (tiles or diamonds♦),cœurs (hearts♥), andpiques (pikes or spades♠) from the German suits around 1480. French suits correspond closely with German suits with the exception of the tiles with the bells but there is one early French deck that had crescents instead of tiles. The English names for the French suits of clubs and spades may simply have been carried over from the older Latin suits.[12]
Beginning around 1440 in northern Italy, some decks started to include an extra suit of (usually) 21 numbered cards known astrionfi ortrumps, to playtarot card games.[13] Always included intarot decks is one card,the Fool or Excuse, which may be part of the trump suit depending on the game or region. These cards do not have pips or face cards like the other suits. Most tarot decks used for games come with French suits but Italian suits are still used in Piedmont, Bologna, and pockets of Switzerland. A few Sicilian towns use the Portuguese-suitedTarocco Siciliano, the only deck of its kind left in Europe.
The esoteric use of Tarot packs emerged in France in the late 18th century, since when special packs intended fordivination have been produced. These typically have the suits cups, pentacles (based on the suit of coins), wands (based on the suit of batons), and swords. The trump cards and Fool of traditional card playing packs were named theMajor Arcana; the remaining cards, often embellished with occult images, were the Minor Arcana. Neither term is recognised by card players.[14][15]
Indivinatory, esoteric and occult tarot, the Minor Arcana, and the suits by extension, are believed to represent relatively mundane features of life. The court cards may represent the people whom one meets.
Each suit also has distinctive characteristics and connotations commonly held to be as follows:[16]
| Latin suit | Element | Class | Faculty |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wands, batons, clubs, staves | Fire | Artisans | Will and creativity |
| Swords, blades | Air | Nobility and military | Reason or logic, wisdom, and intellect |
| Cups, chalices, goblets, vessels | Water | Clergy | Spiritual matters, or emotions and love |
| Pentacles, coins, disks, rings | Earth | Merchants | Material matters, or possessions and career |
| Origin | Suits | |||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Latin card suits | ||||||||||||
| Italian[d] | Clubs (Bastoni)  | Cups (Coppe)  | Swords (Spade)  | Coins (Denari)  | ||||||||
| Spanish[e] | Clubs (Bastos)  | Cups (Copas)  | Swords (Espadas)  | Coins (Oros)  | ||||||||
| Portuguese | Clubs (Paus)  | Cups (Copas)  | Swords (Espadas)  | Coins (Ouros)  | ||||||||
| Comparison of German, French and Swiss suits[f] | ||||||||||||
| Swiss-German[g] | Acorns[h] | Shields[i] | Roses[j] | Bells[k] | ||||||||
| German | Acorns[l] | Hearts[m] | Leaves[n] | Bells[o] | ||||||||
| French | Clover (Clubs)[p]  | Hearts | Pikes (Spades)[q]  | Tiles (Diamonds)  | ||||||||
| Karuta suits | ||||||||||||
| Komatsufuda | Clubs | Cups | Swords | Coins | ||||||||
| Unsun Karuta | Clubs (パオ)  | Cups (コツ)  | Swords (イス)  | Coins (オウル)  | Guru (クル)  | |||||||
| Kabufuda | Clubs | |||||||||||
| Hanafuda[r] | Pine[s] | Plum[t] | Cherry[u] | Wisteria[v] | Iris[w] | Peony[x] | Bush Clover[y] | Susuki Grass[z] | Chrysanthemum[aa] | Maple[ab] | Willow[ac] | Paulownia[ad] |
In a large and popular category oftrick-taking games, one suit may be designated in each deal to betrump and all cards of the trump suit rank above all non-trump cards, and automatically prevail over them, losing only to a higher trump if one is played to the same trick.[17] Non-trump suits are called plain suits.[18]
Some games treat one or more suits as being special or different from the others. A simple example isSpades, which uses spades as a permanent trump suit. A less simple example isHearts, which is a kind ofpoint trick game in which the object is to avoid taking tricks containing hearts. With typical rules for Hearts (rules vary slightly) the queen of spades and the two of clubs (sometimes also the jack of diamonds) have special effects, with the result that all four suits have different strategic value.Tarot decks have a dedicated trump suit.
Games of theKarnöffel Group have between one and fourchosen suits, sometimes called selected suits or, misleadingly, trump suits. The chosen suits are typified by having a disrupted ranking and cards with varying privileges which may range from full to none and which may depend on the order they are played to the trick. For example, chosen Sevens may be unbeatable when led, but otherwise worthless. In SwedishBräus some cards are even unplayable. In games where the number of chosen suits is less than four, the others are calledunchosen suits and usually rank in their natural order.
Whist-style rules generally preclude the necessity of determining which of two cards of different suits has higher rank, because a card played on a card of a different suit either automatically wins or automatically loses depending on whether the new card is a trump. However, some card games also need to define relative suit rank. An example of this is in auction games such asbridge, where if one player wishes to bid to make some number of heart tricks and another to make the same number of diamond tricks, there must be a mechanism to determine which takes precedence in the bidding order.
There is no standard order for the four suits and so there are differing conventions among games that need a suit hierarchy. Examples of suit order are (from highest to lowest):
| High → low | Games | Mnemonic | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ♠ | ♥ | ♦ | ♣ | Bridge for bidding and scoring Poker occasionally | Alphabetical orderreversed: S, H, D, C |
| ♠ | ♥ | ♣ | ♦ | Big Two | 1 tip, 2 halves,3 leaves, 4 corners |
| ♥ | ♦ | ♣ | ♠ | Preferans only used for bidding Five Hundred for bidding and scoring Thirteen | |
♥ | ♦ | ♠ | ♣ | Préférence only used for bidding | |
| ♣ | ♠ | ♥ | ♦ | Skat for bidding (valued 12, 11, 10, 9) and to determine which Jack beats which in play Other European games such asBruus | |
| ♣ | ♠ | ♥ | ♦ | Cego for determining highest card in certain situations | |
| ♣ | ♥ | ♠ | ♦ | Ninety-nine for scoring | 3, 2, 1, 0lobes |
The pairing of suits is a vestigial remnant ofGanjifa, a game where half the suits were in reverse order, the lower cards beating the higher. In Ganjifa, progressive suits were called "strong" while inverted suits were called "weak". In Latin decks, the traditional division is between the long suits of swords and clubs and the round suits of cups and coins. This pairing can be seen inOmbre andTarot card games. German and Swiss suits lack pairing but French suits maintained them and this can be seen in the game ofSpoil Five.[19]
In some games, such asblackjack, suits are ignored. In other games, such asCanasta, only the color (red or black) is relevant. In yet others, such as bridge, each of the suit pairings are distinguished.
Incontract bridge, there are three ways to divide four suits into pairs: bycolor, byrank and byshape resulting in six possible suit combinations.
Some decks, while using the French suits, give each suit a different color to make the suits more distinct from each other. Inbridge, such decks are known asno-revoke decks, and the most common colors are black spades, red hearts, blue diamonds and green clubs, although in the past the diamond suit usually appeared in a golden yellow-orange. A pack occasionally used in Germany uses green spades (comparable to leaves), red hearts, yellow diamonds (comparable to bells) and black clubs (comparable to acorns). This is a compromise deck devised to allow players from East Germany (who used German suits) and West Germany (who adopted the French suits) to be comfortable with the same deck when playing tournamentSkat after theGerman reunification.[20]
This is a list of suit systems devised by early Swiss-German cardmakers mentioned byMichael Dummett:[11]
| Name | Time | Suit 1 | Suit 2 | Suit 3 | Suit 4 | Other Suits |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Incomplete sheet fromBasel | c. 1531 | Purses | Keys | |||
| Several incomplete packs fromBasel | c. 1470 to 1529 | Feathers | Hats | Shields | Bells | |
| Cards from Shields suit (presumed Swiss suit system) | c. 1433-1451 | Shields | Acorns (presumed) | Roses (presumed) | Bells (presumed) | |
| Stuttgart pack | c. 1427-1431 | Stags | Hounds | Ducks | Falcons | |
| Ambraser Hofjagdspiel | c. 1440-1445 | Falcons | Lures | Hounds | Herons | |
| Pack byVirgil Solis | c. 1540-1545 | Lions | Apes | Parrots | Peacocks | |
| 2 fragmentary sheets from theUpper Rhine | 16th century | Carnations | Beans | Birds | ||
| Pack byThomas Murner for teaching logic | 1509 | Bells | Acorns | Hearts | Shields | Crowns, et al. (total 16 suits) |
| Pack byThomas Murner for teaching law | 1515 | Bells | Acorns | Hearts | Shields | Crowns, et al. (total 12 suits) |
| Liechtenstein pack | c. 1440-1450, c. 1494-1500 (disputed) | Coins | Batons | Cups | Swords | Shields |
| Pack byHopfer of Nuremburg[verification needed] | c. 1536-1539 | Coins | Batons (arranged as spokes of a wheel) | Cups | Swords (arranged as spokes of a wheel) | |
| 2 packs by Heinrich Hauk ofFrankfurt | 1585 and 1588 | Roses | Acorns | Birds | Bells | |
| Pack perhaps by Heinrich Hauk | Lions | Apes | Parrots | Eagles | ||
| Pack byHans Sebald Beham | c. 1523 | Leaves | Acorns | Roses | Pomegranates | |
| Pack attributed toHans Sebald Beham | Acorns | Bells | Roses | Parrots | ||
| Listed by Dominican Meister Ingold | 1450 | Roses | Crowns | Pennies | Rings | |
| Set of mutilated cards fromAlsace | c. 1480 | Shields | Crowns | Bells | Acorns | |
| Fragmentary sheet of Maihinger pack | c. 1450 | Lions | Bears | Dogs |
Other suit systems:
| Name | Time | Suit 1 | Suit 2 | Suit 3 | Suit 4 | Other Suits |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pack byMaster of the Playing Cards[21][22] | c. 1455 | Flowers | Wild men | Beasts of prey | Stags | Herons |
| Hofämterspiel[23] | c. 1460 | Shields (France) | Shields (Germany) | Shields (Bohemia) | Shields (Hungary) | |
| Flemish Hunting Deck[24] | c. 1475-1480 | Dog collars | Dog tethers | Gaming nooses | Hunting horns | |
| Pack by south German engraver[25] | c. 1496 | Pomegranates[ae] | Batons | Cups | Swords | |
| Pack by Master P. W.[26] | c. 1500 | Hares | Parrots | Carnations | Columbines | Roses |
| Pack byJost Amman[27] | 1588 | Books | Ink pads | Pots | Cups |
A large number of games are based around a deck in which each card has a rank and a suit (usually represented by a color), and for each suit there is exactly one card having each rank, though in many cases the deck has various special cards as well.
| Games | Suits | red | orange brown gold | yellow | green | cyan teal | blue | purple | magenta pink | black grey white |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DUO | 4 | |||||||||
| UNO,Phase 10 | 4 | |||||||||
| UNO Flip | 8 | |||||||||
| 4-Colour Suits | 4 | |||||||||
| 4-Colour Suits (Old) | 4 | |||||||||
| Rook, 4-Colour Suits (German) | 4 | |||||||||
| Sticheln | 5 | |||||||||
| Mü | 5 | |||||||||
| Rage, Level 8 | 6 | |||||||||
| Schotten Totten | 6 |
Decks for some games are divided into suits, but otherwise bear little relation to traditional games. An example would be the board gameTaj Mahal, in which each card has one of four background colors, the rule being that all the cards played by a single player in a single round must be the same color. The selection of cards in the deck of each color is approximately the same and the player's choice of which color to use is guided by the contents of their particular hand.
In the trick-taking card gameFlaschenteufel ("The Bottle Imp"), all cards are part of a single sequence ranked from 1 to 37 but split into three suits depending on its rank. players must follow the suit led, but if they are void in that suit they may play a card of another suitand this can still win the trick if its rank is high enough. For this reason every card in the deck has a different number to prevent ties. A further strategic element is introduced since one suit contains mostly low-ranking cards and another, mostly high-ranking cards.
Whereas cards in a traditional deck have two classifications—suit and rank—and each combination is represented by one card, giving for example4 suits × 13 ranks = 52 cards, each card in aSet deck has four classifications each into one of three categories, giving a total of3 × 3 × 3 × 3 = 81 cards. Any one of these four classifications could be considered asuit, but this is not really enlightening in terms of the structure of the game.
Card suit symbols occur in places outside card playing:
In computer and otherdigital media, suit symbols can be represented withcharacter encoding, notably in theISO andUnicode standards, or withWeb standard (SGML's named entitysyntax):
| UTF code: | U+2660 (9824dec) | U+2665 (9829dec) | U+2666 (9830dec) | U+2663 (9827dec) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Symbol: | ♠ | ♥ | ♦ | ♣ |
| Name: | Black Spade Suit | Red Heart Suit | Red Diamond Suit | Black Club Suit |
| Entity: | ♠ | ♥ | ♦ | ♣ |
| UTF code: | U+2664 (9828dec) | U+2661 (9825dec) | U+2662 (9826dec) | U+2667 (9831dec) |
| Symbol: | ♤ | ♡ | ♢ | ♧ |
| Name: | White Spade Suit | White Heart Suit | White Diamond Suit | White Club Suit |
| UTF codes are expressed by theUnicode code point "U+hexadecimal number" syntax, and as subscript the respective decimal number. Symbols are expressed here as they are in theweb browser'sHTML renderization. Name is the formal name adopted in the standard specifications. | ||||
Unicode is the most frequently used encoding standard, and suits are in theMiscellaneous Symbols Block (2600–26FF) of the Unicode.
In some card games the card suits have a dominance order, for example: club (lowest) - diamond - heart - spade (highest). That led toin spades being used to meanmore than expected, in abundance, very much.[29]
Other expressions drawn from bridge and similar games includestrong suit (any area of personal strength) andto follow suit (to imitate another's actions).
In the system that is most commonly used, these suits are designated as Wands, Swords, Cups, and Pentacles.
The Minor Arcana comprises fifty-six cards divided into four suits, which in most decks are swords, wands, cups, and coins or pentacles.