In playing cards, a suit is one of the categories into which the cards of a deck are divided. Most often, each card bears one of several pips (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 on face 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 specific card 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 called jokers.
While English-speaking countries traditionally use cards with the French suits of clubs, spades, hearts and diamonds, many other countries have their own traditional suits. Much of central Europe uses the Germanic suits of acorns, leaves, hearts and bells; Spain and parts of Italy and South America use the Latin suits of swords, batons, cups and coins; German Switzerland uses the Swiss suits of acorns, shields, yellow roses and bells. 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.
History Modern Western playing cards are generally divided into two or three general suit-systems. The older Latin suits are subdivided into the Italian and Spanish suit-systems. The younger Germanic suits are subdivided into the German and Swiss suit-systems. The French suits are a derivative of the German suits but are generally considered a separate system.McLeod, John. Games classified by type of cards or tiles used at pagat.com. Retrieved 24 March 2017.
Origin and development of the Latin suits
The earliest card games were trick-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 as Tien Gow.
Chinese money-suited cards are believed to be the oldest ancestor to the Latin suit system. The money-suit system is based on denominations of currency: Coins, Strings of Coins, Myriads of Strings (or of coins), and Tens 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 into Central 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" () upside-down. The Chinese numeral character for Ten () on the Tens of Myriads suit may have inspired the Muslim suit of swords. Another clue linking these Chinese, Muslim, and European cards are the ranking of certain suits. In many early Chinese games like Madiao, the suit of coins was in reverse order so that the lower ones beat the higher ones. In the Indo-Persian game of Ganjifa, half the suits were also inverted, including a suit of coins. This was also true for the European games of Tarot and Ombre. The inverting of suits had no purpose in terms of play but was an artifact from the earliest games.
These Turko-Arabic cards, called Kanjifa, used the suits coins, clubs, cups, and swords, but the clubs represented polo sticks; Europeans changed that suit, as polo 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 from Mamluk Egypt and Moorish Granada in the 1370s.
There are four types of Latin suits: Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and an extinct archaic type.McLeod, John. Games played with Latin suited cards at pagat.com. Retrieved 10 November 2015. The systems can be distinguished by the pips of their long suits: swords and clubs. Northern Italian swords are curved outward and the clubs appear to be batons. They intersect one another. Southern Italian and Spanish swords are straight, and the clubs appear to be knobbly cudgels. They do not cross each other (except in the three of clubs). Portuguese pips are like the Spanish, but they intersect like Northern Italian ones. They sometimes have dragons on the aces.Wintle, Adam. Portuguese Playing Cards at the World of Playing Cards. Retrieved 26 March 2017. This system lingers on only in the Tarocco Siciliano and the Unsun Karuta and Komatsufuda of Japan. Unsun Karuta additionally has a fifth Guru suit (circular whirls). The archaic system is like the Northern Italian one, but the swords are curved inward so they touch each other without intersecting.Gjerde, Tor. Italian renaissance woodcut playing cards at old.no. Retrieved 26 March 2017. Minchiate (a game that used a 97-card deck) used a mixed system of Italian clubs and Portuguese swords.
Despite a long history of trade with China, Japan was not introduced to playing cards until the arrival of the Portuguese in the 1540s. Early locally made cards, Karuta, were very similar to Portuguese decks. Increasing restrictions by the Tokugawa shogunate on gambling, card playing, and general foreign influence, resulted in the Hanafuda deck that today is used most often for fishing-type games and the Komatsufuda and Kabufuda 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; kabufuda eventually lost all distinctions of suit, with the deck having four identical copies of each rank. Unsun karuta did not face the same restrictions and instead developed an additional suit and additional ranks.
Invention of German and French suits
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.Meyer, Huck. Liechtenstein'sches Spiel at trionfi.com. Retrieved 24 March 2017. The Swiss-Germans developed their own suits of shields, roses, acorns, and bells around 1450. Instead of roses and shields, the Germans settled with hearts and leaves around 1460. The French derived their suits of trèfles (clovers or clubs ), carreaux (tiles or diamonds ), cœurs (hearts ), and piques (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.
Tarot cards Beginning around 1440 in northern Italy, some decks started to include an extra suit of (usually) 21 numbered cards known as trionfi or trumps, to play tarot card games.McLeod, John. Card Games: Tarot Games at pagat.com. Retrieved 10 November 2015. Always included in tarot 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-suited Tarocco 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 for divination 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 the Major Arcana; the remaining cards, often embellished with occult images, were the Minor Arcana. Neither term is recognised by card players.
Suits Divination symbols In divinatory, 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: 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
Comparisons between suits OriginSuitsLatin card suitsItalianClubs(Bastoni) Cups(Coppe) Swords(Spade) Coins(Denari) SpanishClubs(Bastos) Cups(Copas) Swords(Espadas) Coins(Oros) PortugueseClubs(Paus) Cups(Copas) Swords(Espadas) Coins(Ouros) Comparison of German, French and Swiss suitsSwiss-GermanAcorns(Eichel) Shields(Schilten) Roses(Rosen) Bells(Schellen) GermanAcorns(Eichel) Hearts(Herz) Leaves(Blätter) Bells(Schellen) FrenchClover(Clubs)(Trèfle)Hearts (Cœur)Pikes(Spades)(Piques)Tiles(Diamonds) (Carreaux)Karuta suitsKomatsufudaClubs(パオ)Cups(コツ)Swords(イス)Coins(オウル)Unsun KarutaClubs(パオ)Cups(コツ)Swords(イス)Coins(オウル)Guru(クル)KabufudaClubs(パオ)HanafudaPine(松)Plum(梅)Cherry(桜)Wisteria(藤)Iris(虹彩)Peony(牡丹)Bush Clover(萩)Susuki Grass(スズキ)Chrysanthemum(菊)Maple(カエデ)Willow(柳)Paulownia(キリ
Suits in games with traditional decks Trumps In a large and popular category of trick-taking games, one suit may be designated in each deal to be trump 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.McLeod, John. Mechanics of Card Games at pagat.com. Retrieved 24 March 2017. Non-trump suits are called plain suits.Parlett, David. The Language of Cards at David Parlett Gourmet Games. Retrieved 24 March 2017.
Special suits Some games treat one or more suits as being special or different from the others. A simple example is Spades, which uses spades as a permanent trump suit. A less simple example is Hearts, which is a kind of point 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.
Chosen suits Games of the Karnöffel Group have between one and four chosen 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 Swedish Bräus some cards are even unplayable. In games where the number of chosen suits is less than four, the others are called unchosen suits and usually rank in their natural order.
Ranking of suits