The first playing cards appeared in China, when paper started to be used in sheetsand books, rather than rolls.
The legend that European explorers of the 13th and 14th century (starting withMarco Polo) brought playing cards from the Orient to Venice is dubious at best. So are the reports that Bertrand du Guesclin (1320-1380) discovered them in Italy "in 1350", during the Hundred Years' War.
In 1371, the Catalan word naip was used todescribe a playing card (the Spanish spelling is naipe). According to Michael Dummett(1925-2011) that's the earliest extant European reference to playing-cards.
Cards became really popular in Europe around 1377, at which time they attracted the attention of religious and civil authorities (until then,dice were the sole gaming enemy). In 1377, a gaming statute was passed in Florence to regulate the"recently introduced" game of naibbe.
The most commonly encountered commercial sizes of playing cards aretabulated below, together with rarely-used standard "B" sizes (ISO 216).
Also included, for good measure, are the series of Archimedes and Fibonacci sizes, which are only of theoretical interest at this time (with the possible exception of the 62.5 by 100 mm format,which is very close to the 62 by 100 size of some novelty decks by Cartamundi).
Cards of more than 105 square centimeters are considered oversized. Conversely, the surface area of miniature cards is less than 35 cm2.
, Regularand Card Sizes (rounded corners of radius R)
When specifications are stated, the above dimensions are nominal or ideal. Otherwise, they're simply measurements from a commercial deck.
(2013-06-16) Two layers of paper (with dark glue) or 100% plastic.
For maximum opacity playing cards are made from two layers of paper,bonded with black glue. After printing, a plastic finish isapplied which determines the feel of the cards (and establishes the reputation of a brand).
The latest trend is to eliminate paper entirely and produce "100% plastic" cardsmade from eitherPVC orcellulose acetate (the later is heralded as feeling more like paper). The better brands apply the same plastic finishto their plastic cards as they do to their paper ones.
Before industrialization, French cards were obtained by using traditionalglue (flour and amidon cooked together) to bind three layers of paper:
Papier cartier : For the backsides, free from identifying defects.
Main-brune : Low-grade paper, providing thickness and opacity.
Papier au pot : Supplied by the taxing authorities, for card fronts.
(2013-05-21) The modern designations came from ancient ones, tied to social classes.
The modern suit symbols (spades, hearts, diamonds, clubs) in two colors (black and red) were introduced in France around 1480. They are still known as French suits. They were competing with the Latin suits (swords, cups, coins and staves) and the German suits (leaves, hearts, bells and acorns) of which the Swiss suits were a major variant (shields, roses, bells and acorns).
Despite the prevailing political animosity between France and England at the time,the French suits eventually spread all over Europe, because theygreatly simplified the printing of playing cards (the Latin and German suits were printed in full colors).
In recent years, the traditional German suits were mostly favored by East-Germans. Shortly after reunification (in the 1990's) a compromise was adopted for the official decks of Skat tournaments, which now have the French-design suits of West-Germany withthe traditional East-German colors (the spades are green and the diamonds yellow,as reminders of the leaves and bells, respectively).
The game of Tarot features trump cards thatdo not belong to any suit.
Trump cards make trick-taking card games more interestingbut dedicated ones increase the size of a deck (cost considerations were not insignificant in the old days). Some of the best card games (bridge, belote, skat) are based on the idea that one of the fourregular suits could be used as trumps after a preliminary negotiationstage (bidding,enchères) oncethe players have received their cards. This idea was introduced in the gameOmbre
(2013-05-26) If there are only 3 face cards per suit, court cards may include aces too.
Originally, the highest-ranking cards in a suit were the four face cards: king, queen, knight and jack. Aces were thelowest-ranking members of a suit. This remains true in tarot decks.
At least one modern tarot deck (The Alchemical Tarot by Robert M. Place) has two female figures in the court: King, Queen, Knight and Lady.
For tarot packs, the locutions court cards and face cards are synonymous. In decks containing onlythree face cards per suit, however, the aces are normally considered torank above the king and they belong to the court. Thus,there are always four court cards.
In most decks with three face-cards, the missing face card is usually one ofthe two knaves (the remaining one is dubbed jack in modern English).
A crown identifies the king (K for König ). Next is the cavalier, riding a horse, called Ober (O). Last is the so-called Unter (U or B for Bube ).
Modern German decks follow the international tradition by retaining the king (K) the queen (D for Dame) and only one knave,called Bube or Bauer (B) sometimes also known as Junge or Wenzel.
The first card ladies were French :
The earliest extant record offemale card figuresdates back to 1392, when the painter Jacquemin Gringnonneur delivered to Charles VIthree decks he had been commissioned for. In those decks, the cavaliers were replaced by queens. This was before the invention of the tarot deck, which has both cavaliers and queens. The royal treasurer, Jacques Poupart, paidGringnonneur 56sols parisi for his work. This was apparently all it took to set the French pattern of 3 face cards whichis dominant today.
(2013-05-27) The Mameluke deck (c. 1370) begat the modern English packs for Bridge and Poker.
The oldest full 52-card deck was identified in November1983, by an Amsterdam dealer who got it in 1978 for less than $3000. Those large oval cards were manufactured in Flanders between 1470 and 1479 (probably in Lille, modern-day France) from paper made before 1450. The deck has three figures (Kings, Queens, Knaves) all hand-painted in three-quarter pofiles. The foursuitshave a hunting theme:
(2013-05-22) (c. 1440) What occultists call the 21 numbered trumps and the fool.
The trumps in the tarot deck are a Europeaninvention inspired by the works of the Italian poet Petrarch (1304-1374) who started writing I Trionfi after 1352 (his manuscript was printed posthumouly in Rome, in 1471). Petrarch's triumphs (that's where the word trumps come from) include the triumph of Chastity over Love and Love over Mankind. Eternity triumphs over Time, Time over Fame, Fame over Death, Death over Life. The charade was pseudo-knowledge that was probably commonplace when thetarot was designed. It served as little more than a graphic mnemonic. With the passage of time, the legend faded away but the cards remained,acquiring an aura of mystery which was never meant...
The other 56 cards (Minor Arcana) are divided into 4 suits (swords,cups,coins andstaves) each with 4 court cards: king,queen,knight andknave.
(2013-05-30) Joan of Arc lives on, thinly disguised, in French decks of cards. Un étendard blanc semé de lys, avec un monde entre deux anges.
In Europe then, news spread apace and unlettered folk got to know, in some strange way, the doings of camps and courts. Virginia Frohlick about Joan of Arc
It's been exactly 582 years since the infamous day (May 30, 1431) when a teenager was burned at the stake for witchcraft, becauseshe heard voices and answered their call. She had led armies into battle on horseback andsecured the throne of the French king, at the beginning of the end of the Hundred Years' War (1337-1453). She was Joan of Arc, she is Queen of Spades.
Playing cards appeared in Francearound 1377,a few months before Charles VI,le fol,would begin his 42-year reign at age 11. The court cards would receive their formal namestoward the end of the reign of his disinherited son,Charles VII(1403-1461) who was mocked as le petit roi de Bourges until his grand coronation in Reims (1429) which was brought about by the fabulous efforts of Joan of Arc,La Hire,Xaintrailles et al.
Jeanne d'Arc (Joan of Arc) lives on as the queen of spades, dame de pique or, appropriately, Lady of Swords. The printed name is Pallas (Athena, the celibate goddess of war) a phonetic anagram for pucelle (the virgin) Jeanne's popular nickname (used in her ennoblement decree of 1429).
The names still printed on modern French 32-card decks form a riddle which would have been easy to decode in 15th-century France. The playing cards were the tabloids of that era and the names of thecelebrities were thinly disguised with anagrams (Argine = Regina = the reigning queen) or phonetic inversions (Pallas = Pucelle = Joan of Arc, dame d'épée).
Naming three of the kings after legendary rulers certainlyflattered the fourth, the reigning king Charles VII, king of cups. The popular interpretation of Charles as Charlemagne (742-814) probably came only much later (that made the 4 card kings belong to the Nine Worthies).
The four ladies are directly connected to Charles VII. They are respectively his mother, his wife, his official mistress and finally,last but not least, the aforementioned lady of swords (Pallas = Pucelle = Virgin) who helped secure his throne: Joan of Arc, burned at the stake at the age of 19 (1431) after a year of incarceration and a riggedtrial. She was innocented posthumously in 1450 and fully rehabilitated by the Churchin 1455.
I had a banner of white bocassin, fringed with silk. The field was sprinkled with lilies, with an orb painted between two angels. On the side was written, I believe, "JHESUS MARIA". Jeanne d'Arc, at her trial (1431)
Hector de Galard belonged to the court of Charles VII and was the founding captain, in 1474,of the Grande Garde, an elite military unit of 100 knightsformed by Louis XI (son, foe and successor of Charles VII) for the protection of the king (nicknamed gentilshommes à bec-corbin, because of their weapon of choice).
Galard's identification with the jack of diamonds isn't nearly as firmly established asthe identification with the jack of hearts of La Hire (Etienne de Vignolles) the most prominent military leader in the campaigns of Joan of Arc, who died pauvre et glorieux at Montauban on January 12, 1443.
Actually, Hector was almost certainly intended to be Hector of Troy, one of the so-calledNine Worthies (les neufs preux) who had been singled outbyJacques de Longuyon(1312) as personifying the medieval ideals of chivalry. That popular list goes a long way towardexplaining how the male names of the court cards were chosen, about 150 years later.
The Nine Worthies (les neufs preux) after Jacques de Longuyon (1312)
Hogier, the jack of spades, was thus meant to be Hoshe'a, son of Nun (whom Moses called Joshua, cf.Numbers 13:16). The identification toOgier the Daneisn't supported by anything, except similar spelling !
The Last Court Card : Valet de Trèfle
The jack of clubs is now dubbed Lancelot.
It was originally dedicated to Judas Maccabeus,another one of thenine worthies,but the name of Judas was supposedly omitted because of the embarrassing homonymy with Judas Iscariot, the betrayor of Christ (in French, "Judas" is acommon synonym of "traitor").
French card masters would sign their names on the jack of clubsor put their marks on the shield carried by that jack. In the 1600s, one of them didn't print anything distinctiveon his jack of clubs. Strangely, he became known by the standardinscription he put on the jack of diamonds : Ector de Trois.
When card makers started to sign one of the aces instead,it was natural to give a new name to the jack of clubs. An obvious choice was the most famous of all knights: The fictitious Lancelot du Lac, chief knight of King Arthur's Round Table, lover of QueenGuinevere (Guenièvre) and seeker of theHoly Grail. This very popular character was first introduced by Chrétien de Troyes in the romance of "Lancelot,le chevalier à la charrette" (c. 1172).
(2013-05-29) The 25th card in Euchre /Jucker was called best bower.
Although traditional card games are played without jokers,virtually no modern 52-card deck is sold without at least one extra joker card (usually two, sometimes four).
Jokers are primarily used for casual poker games, which are alwaysplayed with a 52-card deck.
In the old game of Jucker from Alsace, the two most powerful cards are two jacks of the same color (called Juker, regionally, or Bauer in German). When that game was exported to the United States,its name was distorted to Euchre and Bauer became Bower (both spellingsapproximate the German pronunciations). The game was originallyplayed with a deck of 24 cards (it still is). An American innovation was to introduce one extra card, called best bower that would take either bower... This became known as the Jucker card. The joker was born.
The first joker was made for the London Club Park deck,published in 1857 by Samuel Hart (New-York).
The joker can also be construed as a descendant of the ancient fool from the tarot deck (which plays a key rôle in the tarot game, as one of only three oudlers ). In most games the joker plays the same rôle as that original fool (a wild card that can take the place of any other card, as the need arises).
The first French joker :
Jokers were only officially allowed into French decks in 1902, at which time the illustratorHenri Bellery-Desfontaines(1867-1909) designedthe first French jokerfor a deck published by Fossorier Amar et Cie, supposedly as a portrait of the "royal dwarf" Haincelin Coq (also spelled Hainselin). Every detail in the picture (below) seems wrong : Coq's costume was mostly green with some red elements. The bonnet à grelots ( fool's cap with bells) wasn't worn by court jesters before the end of the 15-th century. Finally, the cunning look seems to betray an intelligence which, alas,Haincelin Coq didn't possess at all...
An international network of joker collectors exists, with cross-linkedamateur websites displaying private collections and/or offering duplicatesfor trade. Dozens of such sites are online, as of June 2013, including:
(2013-06-05) The mimicks of Aluette are tied to Latin suits and traditional designs.
Nowadays, packs of Mexican origin are commonly sold as Spanish decks of "50 cards" (48 cards plus two modernjokers, calledcomodines) in the proper Latin suits (called espadas, copas, oros, bastos) but without the popular symbolism associated to the game of Aluette, which seems to have been limited to the west coast of France (mostly, from cardmakers located in the regional capital ofNantes).
(2013-06-02) Ombre and the introduction of bidding for trumps.
(2013-06-10)
(2013-05-27) The French deck is used for many popular games.
(2013-06-18) Created in Altenburg around 1815, it's now part of German culture.
To this day, part of the economy and cultural identity of Altenburg revolvesaround Skat. The city is known far and wide as Skat's town ( Skatstadt ).
The dealer deals "3-skat-4-3" clockwise after shuffling the deck. That's to say, he first gives 3 cards to the player to his left, 3 cards to the thirdplayer, 3 cards to himself and discards 2 cards (the Skat ) in the middle of the table. He then serves a round of 4 cards and a final round of 3cards, so everyone has 10 cards at the beginning of the bidding.
The 2 cards of the Skat will belong to the winner of the auction, the declarer, who will play 10 tricks against the other two, aiming either to win most trick pointsor none at all (the latter applies when a Null game is declared).
The player who wins the auction by biding the highest number choosesthe type of play and the trump color, if any (the 4 jacks are the highest trumps, except in a null game). He then plays against the other two for a score computed according to his 12 cards (10 original cards plus theSkat ).
The game was launched by Jaques & Sons at the Great Exhibition of 1851. The 4 cards in every family are labeled after the pattern:
Mr. Pots, the Painter.
Mrs. Pots, the Painter's Wife.
Master Pots, the Painter's Son.
Miss Pots, the Painter's Daughter.
The 11 original families were:
Block, the Barber
Bones, the Butcher
Bun, the Baker
Bung, the Brewer
Chip, the Carpenter
Dip, the Dyer
Dose, the Doctor
Grits, the Grocer
Mug, the Milkman
Pots, the Painter
Soot, the Sweep
Besides the funny names tied to the professions, the initial appeal of the game was due in no small part to the44 caricatures byJohn Tenniel (1820-1914)the chief cartoonist forPunch. The deck underwent many minor revisions, starting with the replacement of "Mug, the Milkman" by"Tape, the Taylor" (before 1880).
The game can also be played with a regular deck. There are two main variants; the first one is normally playedwith a full deck (52 cards, 13 families) and the secondone with lesser decks, including the 44 cards of traditionalspecialized Happy Families decks:
Go Fish! Hunting for a whole family: "Do you have any kings?"
Quartets Hunting for a card: "Do you have the king of clubs?"
Merchandising vs. Education :
Modern merchandisers often shortchange unsuspecting parents by peddling smallerdecks of only eight families (32 cards) based on the latest craze. On outter packages, there's no hint of the swindle, which is madeeven easier by the lack of proper labelling on traditional 44-card decks.
Another unfortunate trend is the substitution of codes (A1, A2, A3, A3, B1, B2, etc.) for the words that formerly identified each card. The lack of formal sentencesduring the game is a definite loss for younger players...
Conversely, although they tend to be pricey,I recommend the luxury educational decks of 48 cards (12 families) thatforgo codes and patterns entirely: Each oversized card (70 mm by 120 mm) illustrates a topic and quotesthe titles of the three cards it forms a "family" with.
(2013-05-25) Jeu des sept familles. French deck of 42 cards; 7 families of 6 cards.
The 42-card deck is composed of seven numbered families of six people. Various names have been assigned to the 6 members of each family:
In 1875, a few months before he put together the first jeu des sept familles the famous caricaturist André Gill painteda famous sign, of a rabbit (lapin) jumping outof a saucepan, for a cabaret in Montmartre which became known as Le lapin à Gill (Gill's Rabbit) then Le lapin agile (The Nimble Rabbit). It was notoriously patronized bystruggling artists and writers before they achieved great fame,including Courteline, Max Jacob, Marcel Proust,Apollinaire, Modigliani, Renoir, Utrillo and Picasso. The cabaret was bought by Aristide Bruant in 1903 and remains a quaint Parisian attraction.
Over 10 million of these automobile-themed games have been sold.
Attaques Attack
Parades Parade
Bottes Safety
3
Panne d'essence
6
Essence
1
Citerne
3
Crevaison
6
Roue de secours
1
Increvable
3
Accident
6
Reparation
1
As du volant
4
Limite de vitesse
6
Fin de limite
1
Véhicule prioritaire
5
Feu rouge
14
Feu vert
Etapes Progress
4
200
12
100
10
75
10
50
10
25
Under the pen name of Edmond Dujardin, the deaf FrenchmanArthur Dujardin (19??-1964) was a publisher of driving-school material. In 1949, he received a Concours Lépinesilver medal for designing a board game around an automobile theme,called L'Autoroute.
Building on that first success, Dujardin went on to design the megaseller Mille Bornes in 1954, inspired by theTouring game ofWilliam Janson Roche (1906) with the key addition of safety cards and coup-fourré play.
The standard graphics of the 1000 bornes cards date back to 1960and are due to the graphist Joseph Le Callennec (1905-1988). They appear on a bilingual edition introduced internationally in 1962. About 200 000 Mille Bornes decks are sold every year.
A player is only allowed to play the highest distance denomination (200 km) once per game. On the corresponding card (above right) Le Callennec drew a swallow which is discreetly reminiscentof the famous logo he had revamped for La Pie qui Chante candies ("Singing Magpie" at left).
300 points
200 points
150 points
100 points
50 points
Brian Kieffer (2011-06-17) What's the probability of having no valid "set" among 9 random cards?
The modern SET® playing cards form an 81-carddeck with a regular ternary structure, used to play a totally new species of games. It's also a good pretext to practice some challenging combinatorial calculus.
Each card is uniquely identified by the four following 3-valued attributes. The 81-card deck covers all possibilities once and only once (81 = 34 ).
Number : one, two or three (identical) symbols.
Shape : squiggles, diamonds or ovals.
Color : red, green or purple.
Shading : solid, striped or open (a.k.a. "empty").
By definition, a valid set consists of 3 cards which,for every attribute, have either identical values or pairwise distinct ones. To put it in a nutshell, three cards do not form a "set" when "two are of one kind and the third isn't".
For any pair of cards, there's one and only one third card that will form a valid set (since only one value of each attribute isn't ruled out). [ ]
Thus, a valid set is determined by two of its cardsin three different ways. So, there are C(81,2)/3 = 1080 distinct valid sets.
Unless n = 3, we can't use this approach to analyze thegeneralized game that uses a deck of nk cards bearing k attributes having n possible values. Instead, we count ordered SETs directly (there are n! of those per SET):
Every ordered SET corresponds uniquely to k sequences chosen among (n! + n) possibilities (namely, n! permutations and n constant sequences,assuming n > 1) except that a choice of a constant sequence for all attributes at once is disallowed (that woukd yield n identical cards). All told, the number of n-SETs [ consistingof n cards bearing separate attributes that are either all alikeor all different ] is thus equal to:
[ (n! + n) k nk ]/ n!
The probability that a hand of n cards forms a SET isequal to that integer divided by the total number of possible hands,namely C(nk, n).
Probability Pn,k (m) of at least one SET among m cards :
Pn,k (m) is zero 0 when m < n.
Pn,k (n) = [ (n! + n) k nk ] / [ n! C(nk, n) ] is tabulated next.
Pn,k (m) is challenging to computewhen m > n. See below.
Probability that n cards with k (n-valued) attributes form a SET
Pn,k (n)
n = 2
n = 3
n = 4
n = 5
k = 1
1
1
1
1
k = 2
1
1 / 7
8 / 455
13 / 5313
k = 3
1
1 / 25
19 / 13237
21 / 302621
k = 4
1
1 / 79
80 / 546227
313 / 120320613
k = 5
1
1 / 241
2801 / 177310271
521 / 5071628121
k = 6
1
1 / 727
6536 / 3812158805
7813 / 1906250203113
k
1
1 / (3k-2)
(7k-1) /(4k-1)(4k-2)(4k-3)
(5k+1) /(5k-2)(5k-3)(5k-4)
The classical SET® game (n=3, k=4) corresponds to the highlighted entry in the above table. The simple formula at the bottom of the column n=3 confirms our previous remark that, with 3-valued attributes,any pair of cards is turned into a SET by one and only one of the remaining cards.
To design actual cards with k = 5 or 6 attributes with n = 3, we could add one or two independent features at the bordersof standard SET cards:
Edge : dark, light or white.
Corner : angle, square or round.
However, that would probably make the game too difficult to play because of thelarge size of the decks (243 or 729 cards) and the great numberof cards that will typically be drawn before a SET is found... On the other hand, k=2 (9 cards) is too simple to be interesting. Only k=4 and k=3 are actually played (the latter mostly by beginners who use one third of a standard SET deck, likethe 27 red cards or the 27 solid ones).
With n = 3, two distinct SETs can have at most one card in common. So, if a hand of m = 4 cards contains a SET, it contains onlyone and is uniquely determined by the juxtaposition of a SET and one other card (if k > 1):
4 cards yield C(4,3) = 4 mutually exclusive opportunities to form a SET.
With m = 5 cards, the similar enumeration of choosing a SET and a pair would count twicethe hands consisting of two SETs sharing one card. Every such combination is obtained in 4 distinct ways by choosing one SET,one of the 3 cards in that set, one random card and the final card thatmakes a SET with the chosen card and the random one. By inclusion-exclusion:
With m = 6 cards, let's first count the number of configurations thatconsist of two disjoint SETs. This is equal to the number of pairs ofSETs minus the previously enumerated number of such pairs that share one card,namely:
Now, a hand of 6 cards may also consist of 3 SETs that share a card pairwise. Each such hand can be obtained in 3 different ways by choosing a SET, two cards in that SETand one random card outside the SET (the two remaining cards arethose which form a SET with that card and either of the two previous choices). Alternatively, as every pair of the 3 shared cards determines one unshared card,there are as many of those special 6-card hands as there are combinations of 3 cardsthat do not form a SET, namely:
To obtain the new deck number of a card,add the weights of its various attributes to the number of objects on it. This gives you a number from 1 to 81 (if you'd rather number such things from 0 to 80, eithersubtract 1 from that total or assign a score from 0 to 2 to the number of objects).
Card 26 (2+6+18+0)
Card 56 (2+0+0+54)
Card 41 (2+3+9+27)
A new deck comes in two separate packs: A small pack with cards 1 to 27 in that order (namely, single solid purple squiggle face up on top and triple solid red oval at thebottom).The rest of them (cards 28 to 81) are in the second pack (single striped purple squiggle face up on top, and triple open red oval at the bottom).
The packaging might gives some weak clue that the manufacturer originally intendedthe large pack to be "first" (they put it in the left compartment ofthe box when the publicity cards are right-side up). However, far more importantly, their advice is to playonly with solid cards when a reduced deck of 27 is desired (for geginners and/or young children). That's why it's best to assign numbers 1-27to the "solid" pack (this gives compatible numbers to the reduced pack and thefull deck).
(2015-03-01) Five symbols: Round (1), cross (2), waves (3), square (4), star (5).
The five cards pictured above were designed in the early 1930s by thepsychologist Karl Zener (1903-1964) to helpin parapsychological investigations by J.B. Rhine of extrasensory perception (clairvoyance or telepathy). Only the black-and-white version was ever widely used.
A standard Zener deck consists of 25 black-and-white Zener cards (5 copies of each). The person to be tested is supposed toguess the cards face-down (clairvoyance) or while someone else looksat them (telepathy). Any statistically-significant deviation from a success rate of 20% would be meaningful (counting either the overall hit rate or the rate for each type of card called, sincethe rate for each type of card presented is very easily biased by personal preferences). No such thing has ever been observed undercontrolled conditions where all forms of cheating and/or sensory leakage are ruled out. (E.g., card counting,stacked deck, marked cards,reflections off the glasses/eyes of the examiner, etc.)
If anything, the use of such cards has now become a joke. Marked decks of Zener cards may well be more common than honest ones!
I had a banner of white bocassin, fringed with silk.
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