Playing card
A playing card is a piece of specially prepared heavy paper, thin cardboard, plastic-coated paper, cotton-paper blend, or thin plastic, marked with distinguishing motifs and used as one of a set for playing card games. Playing cards are typically palm-sized for convenient handling.
A complete set of cards is called a pack (UK English), deck (US English), or set (Universal), and the subset of cards held at one time by a player during a game is commonly called a hand. A pack of cards may be used for playing a variety of card games, with varying elements of skill and chance, some of which are played for money (e.g., poker and blackjack games at a casino). Playing cards are also used for illusions, cardistry, building card structures, cartomancy and memory sport.
The front (or "face") of each card carries markings that distinguish it from the other cards in the pack and determine its use under the rules of the game being played. The back of each card is identical for all cards in any particular pack to create an imperfect information scenario. Usually every card will be smooth; however, some packs have braille to allow blind people to read the card number and suit.
Playing cards in Unicode
Unicode is a computing industry standard for the handling of fonts and symbols. Within it is a set of images depicting playing cards, and another depicting the French card suits.
Card suits
The Miscellaneous Symbols block contains the following, at U+2660–2667:
Playing cards deck
Unicode 6.0 added images for: Minor Arcana Tarot, the 52 cards of the standard French deck, 4 Knights, a back of a card, and two for black and white (or red) jokers in the block U+1F0A0–1F0FF. Unicode 7.0 added a specific red joker and twenty-two generic trump cards with the reference description being not the Major Arcana used in cartomancy but the Tarot Nouveau used in tarot card games.
Block
The Playing Cards block contains one emoji: U+1F0CF.
References
Playing Cards (film)
Playing Cards (French: ''Une partie de cartes'') is an 1896 French short black-and-white silent film by Georges Méliès. It was the first film in Méliès' prolific career, and thus, is number one in his Star Film catalogue. It is a remake of Louis Lumière's film The Messers. Lumière at Cards which was released earlier the same year. Along with Georges Méliès himself, his brother Gaston Méliès and daughter Georgette Méliès both appear in the film. The film is also known as Card Party.
Synopsis
Three men are sitting at a table, two of them playing cards while the third smokes and reads a newspaper. The man who is not playing cards calls over a young girl and has her fetch a woman with a bottle of wine. He proceeds to pour glasses for himself and his friends. After drinking the wine, the man reads a story out of the newspaper causing his friends to laugh.
External links
German playing cards
German playing cards are a style of playing cards used is some parts of Central Europe. Playing cards (Spielkarten) entered German-speaking lands around the late 1370s. After much experimentation, the cards settled into new suits of Acorns (Eichel), Leaves (Grün or Blatt), Hearts (Herz) and Bells (Schelle) around 1450. Closely related Swiss playing cards are used in German-speaking Switzerland. The French suit symbols were derived from the German ones around 1480. German-suited cards spread throughout Central Europe into areas that were once under German or Austrian control (Hungary, Slovenia, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Croatia, Transylvania, Vojvodina, South Tyrol, Transcarpathia, and parts of Poland). They were also produced and used as far east as Russia until the early 20th century. German-suited decks are not well known all over these countries including parts of Germany itself as they have been undergoing strong competition from French playing cards since the late 17th-century. Traditional card games in which the German suit is used include Skat, Schafkopf and Doppelkopf.
