The History and Evolution of Playing Cards | Hacker News Reader

The History and Evolution of Playing Cards

playingcarddecks.com

39 pointsgaws10 comments

A deck of playing cards has to have one of the highest density of "usefulness" an object can have that I can think of. I would love to hear if anyone can think of any one thing nearly as useful in so many ways.

Entertainment of course - single and multiplayer, chance and betting, mathematics of all kinds, throwing, building (like a house of cards). I thought it was so cool when a character in Cryptonomicon used it to create an encryption cypher from jail.

A sufficiently randomly shuffled deck of cards is almost certainly in an arrangement that has never existed before and will ever exist again.

52 cards divides evenly by 2, 4, 13, 26. Add two jokers and you get 3, 6, 9, 18. Remove the faces and you get even more.

Its just so well designed - or evolved as it were. If you could only have one object for the rest of your life to entertain or educate you, I dont think you could do much better than a deck of cards.

My father could do a perfect riffle shuffle repeatedly, and do the classic fan fold and so forth --- perfected this technique playing cards on troop ships going from one duty station to another.

John Scarne wrote extensively on this in his various books --- _Scarne on Cards_ is well-worth reading, and in particular, speaks of the need for practice and repetition to develop the dexterity and feel necessary for card manipulation/tricks.

> I would love to hear if anyone can think of any one thing nearly as useful in so many ways.

What about a computer? If you make the argument that it is a composite of many different elements, so is a deck of cards.

I agree with you but a deck of 48 would be more useful with all the divisors you get from multiples of 24. The fact that it is also triple encoded is super helpful (color and suit)for its usefulness.

There is a saying in Bridge that each hand you play has almost certainly never been played before and almost certainly will never be played again.

I never knew that “Kings being King David (Spades), Alexander the Great (Clubs), Charlemagne (Hearts), and Julius Caesar (Diamonds), representing the four empires of Jews, Greeks, Franks, and Romans. Notable characters ascribed to the Queens include the Greek goddess Pallas Athena (Spades), Judith (Hearts), Jacob's wife Rachel (Diamonds), and Argine (Clubs). The Knaves were commonly designated as La Hire (Hearts), Charlemagne’s knight Ogier (Spades), Hector the hero of Troy (Diamonds), and King Arthur's knight Lancelot (Clubs).”

There is also an entertaining TED talk by Marco Tempest explaining cards https://www.ted.com/talks/marco_tempest_a_cyber_magic_card_t...

This article triggered Gell Mann Amnesia very quickly when it suggested playing cards may have evolved from Mah Jongg tiles. Mah Jongg was invented in the mid 1800s and spread during the Taiping Rebellion. Chinese society has Middle Ages origin gambling cards, but Mah Jongg tiles are very far removed from them.

Just a nit: The Spanish deck of "naipes" is not just a historical footnote, the deck is still in use today. The same may be true for some other historical variants.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish-suited_playing_cards

If you're interested in this topic and you live (or visit) Paris, you can check https://www.museecarteajouer.com/ , I've been there with my kids and it was quite nice, it goes from the first cards/tarot to pokemons cards.

My family (me, my wife, and our 2 daughters) love to travel, and have made a point of bringing home a deck of playing cards from each place we visit. They make great souvenirs, and it's fun to reminisce over a game of "President" (aka "A$$hole").

Reply on news.ycombinator.com