Playing Cards Reading Answers

A playing card is a piece of specially prepared card stock, heavy paper, thin cardboard, plastic- coated paper, cotton-paper blend, or thin plastic that is marked with distinguishing motifs. Often the front and back of each card has a finish to make handling easier. They are most commonly used for playing card games, and are also used in magic tricks, cardistry, card throwing, and card houses; cards may also be collected. Some patterns of Tarot playing card are also used for divination, although bespoke cards for this use are more common. Playing cards are typically palm-sized for convenient handling, and usually are sold together in a set as a deck of cards or pack of cards. The most common type of playing card is that found in the French-suited, standard 52-card pack, of which the most common design is the English pattern, followed by the Belgian-Genoese pattern. However, many countries use other, traditional types of playing card, including those that are German, Italian, Spanish and Swiss-suited. Tarot cards (also known locally as Tarocks or tarocchi); are an old genre of playing card that is still very popular in France, central and Eastern Europe and Italy. Asia, too, has regional cards such as the Japanese hanafuda

variety of styles, as decks may be custom produced for casinos and magicians (sometimes in the i form of trick decks), made as promotional items, or intended as souvenirs, artistic works, educational tools, or branded accessories. Decks of cards or even single cards are also collected as a hobby or for monetary value. Cards may also be produced for trading card sets or collectible card games, which can comprise hundreds if not thousands of unique cards. Playing cards may have been invented.

Playing cards are available in a wide during the Tang dynasty around the 9th century AD as a result of the usage of woodblock printing technology. The earliest known text containing a possible reference to card games is a 9th-century text known as the Collection of Miscellanea at Duyang, written by Tang dynasty writer Su E. It describes Princess Tongchang, daughter of Emperor Yizong of Tang, playing the "leaf game" in 868 with members of the Wei clan, the family of the princess's husband. The first known book on the "leaf" game was called the Yezi Gexi and allegedly a written by a Tang woman. It received commentary by writers of subsequent dynasties. The Song dynasty (960-1279) scholar Ouyang Xiu (1007-1072) asserts that the "leaf" game existed at least since the mid-Tang dynasty and associated its invention with the development of printed sheets as a writing medium. However, Ouyang also claims that the "leaves" were pages of a book used in a board game 2 played with dice, and that the rules of the game were lost by 1067. Other games revolving around alcoholic drinking involved using

playing cards of a sort from the Tang dynasty onward. However, these cards did not contain suits or numbers. Instead, they were printed with instructions or forfeits for whomever drew them. The earliest dated instance of a game involving cards occurred on 17 July 1294 together with nine of the actual cards." when "Yan Sengzhu and Zheng Pig-Dog were caught playing cards [zhi pai] and that wood blocks for printing them had been impounded.

William Henry Wilkinson suggests that the first cards may have been actual paper currency which doubled as both the tools of gaming and the stakes being played for, similar to trading card games. Using paper money was inconvenient and risky so they were substituted by play money known as "money cards". One of the earliest games in which we know the rules is madiao, a trick-taking game, which into four suits: 9 in coins, 9 in strings of coins (which may have been misinterpreted as sticks from crude drawings), 9 in myriads (of dates to the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644). 15th-century scholar Lu Rong described it is as being played with 38 "money cards" divided on coins or of strings), and 11 in tens of myriads (a myriad is 10,000). The two latter suits had Water Margin characters instead of pips 2 them with Chinese to mark their rank and suit. The suit of coins is in reverse order with 9 of coins being the lowest going up to 1 of coins as the high card.