|
History The origin of the playing cards is obscure, but most people believe that they began in China, soon after the invention of paper. The ancient Chinese cards were different from the one we know today, but had similar way of classifying cards using suits and numbers.
Modern cards arrived in Europe with the Mamelukes of Egypt, probably in the late 1300s. At that time, they were very similar to those we use today. The Mameluke pack had 52 cards, four suits and ten cards per suit.
During the 1300s, the use of cards spread across Europe. The first cards were executed by hand, thus made them very expensive, but later other technologies of mass-production were used to make the decks.
During the years the symbolism of the cards changed. The Europeans changed the court cards to represent the royalty and were usually using "king", "chevalier" and "knave" and sometimes "queen" and "valet" cards. The common suits (hearts, diamonds, spades and clubs) originated in France, approximately in 1480. Later on, the Joker card was added to the American card deck and spread to Europe along with the spread of Poker. The standard deck The standard deck, also known as the Anglo-American deck, has 52 playing cards. There are 13 ranks of each of the four French suits including: spades, hearts, diamonds and clubs. Each suit includes an ace, a king, a queen and a jack. There are also 2 jokers (sometimes more, sometimes less).
Most of the modern decks carry index labels on the opposite corners in order to facilitate identifying the cards when they overleap.
|