existing games.
One of the features of Card Games For Dummies, 3rd Edition, is the diversity of card games covered in it. I can’t hope to list all the rules of every card game within the chapters, so this chapter discusses the general rules that apply to most card games. Get these basics under your belt so you can jump in to any of the games I describe in detail later in the book.
Talking the Talk
Card gamers have a language all their own. This section covers the most common and useful lingo you encounter as you get to know various card games.
Getting all decked out
You play card games with a deck of cards intended for that game, also referred to as a pack in the United Kingdom. The cards should all be exactly the same size and shape and should have identical backs. The front of the cards should be immediately identifiable and distinguishable.
A deck of cards has subdivisions of four separate subgroups. Each one of these subgroups has 13 cards, although the standard deck in France and Germany may have only 8 cards in each subgroup. The four subgroups each have a separate identifiable marking, and in American and English decks, you see two sets of black markings (spades and clubs) and two sets of red markings (hearts and diamonds). Each of these sets is referred to as a suit.
CARD GAMES THROUGH THE AGES
Some form of playing cards existed in China, at least 80 years and maybe as much as 250 years before they surfaced in Europe. The earliest known Chinese cards had four suits, described in mid-15th-century sources, and featured 38 cards: 9 each in three suits and 11 in the fourth. Similar cards are used in parts of China and Southeast Asia to this day, though the deck composition and designs are not identical.
Although some scholars claim the Saracens or the Persians invented card games (the Persians certainly seem to have invented Poker), the Mamelukes of Egypt appear to be credible ancestors of modern card games. A Mameluke deck from around 1400 A.D. consists of 52 cards with suits of swords, polo sticks, cups, and coins.
National standard designs appeared in the late 15th century. Swiss decks (with shields, flowers, bells, and acorns) and German decks (with hearts, leaves, bells, and acorns) appeared by 1475. The French deck (with spades, hearts, diamonds, and clubs) first appeared by 1480.
In Great Britain, The Worshipful Company of Playing-Card Makers was set up in 1628 to produce cards, and a tax was introduced on every deck. Laws were also enacted to ban the import of cards; from then on, you could only play with cards of domestic origin. The year 1862 was very significant for the rise in popularity of playing cards. Along with a fall in the duty charge of playing cards, printer Thomas de la Rue patented the process for mass-producing cards. From then on, well-designed playing cards were in plentiful supply.
Ranking card order
Each suit in U.S. and U.K. decks has 13 cards, and the rankings of the 13 vary from game to game. The most traditional order in card games today is ace, king, queen, jack, and then 10 down to 2.
Also, Gin Rummy and several other games such as Cribbage treat the ace exclusively as the low card, below the two.
Preparing to Play
Before you can start any card game, you need to ration out the cards. Furthermore, in almost every game, you don’t want any other players to know what cards you have been dealt. That is where the shuffle and deal come into play.
Shuffling off
Before the dealer distributes the cards to the players, a player must randomize, or shuffle, them in such a way that no one knows what anyone else receives. (Shuffling is particularly relevant when the cards have all been played out on the previous hand.)
The shuffler, not necessarily the player who must distribute the cards, mixes up the cards by holding them face-down and interleaving them a sufficient number of times so that the order of all the cards becomes random and unpredictable. When one player completes the task, another player (frequently in European games, the player to the right of the dealer) rearranges the deck by splitting it into two halves and reassembles the two halves, putting the lower half on top of the other portion. This is called cutting the deck.
Getting a square deal
In most games, one player is responsible for distributing the cards to the players — this player is the dealer. For the first hand, you often select the dealer by having each player draw a card from the deck; the lowest card (or, perhaps, the highest) gets to deal. After the first hand is complete, the rules of most games dictate that the player to the dealer’s left deals the next hand, with the deal rotating clockwise.
The player to the dealer’s left, frequently the first person to play a card after the deal, is known as the elder or eldest hand. The younger hand is the player to the dealer’s right. These players may also be known as the left hand opponent and right hand opponent (which you sometimes see abbreviated as LHO and RHO). The dealer may also refer to the player sitting opposite them — their partner in a partnership game — as the CHO, or center hand opponent.
The due process of a deal involves the dealer taking the deck in one hand and passing a single card from the top of the deck to the player on their left, in such a way that nobody can see the face of the card. The dealer then does the same for the next player, and so on around the table. The process continues until everyone receives their due number of cards.
