How to Know What's in a Deck of Playing Cards

China was the first to report playing cards and they arrived in Europe in the 14th century. At that time, they were pretty close to what we see today. Playing cards come as a standard deck or a pinochle deck. They are different in the number of cards as well as the cards that are in the deck.

Difficulty: Easy

Instructions

1. Review a standard deck of playing cards. A standard deck has 52 cards. There are four suits: hearts, diamonds, spades and clubs.

2. Look at each suit to find you have 13 different cards. An ace, which is the same as a one or thirteen, then 2 through 10, a jack, queen and king.

3. Check the game you are playing and see if an ace is low or high. If it is low any card can beat it, if it is high nothing beats it.

4. Open your deck of pinochle cards and you can see that they do not have any cards lower than a nine. There are still 4 suits but only 48 cards.

5. Notice that in the pinochle deck you have two of each card. There are two nines, tens, jacks, queens, kings and aces in hearts, diamonds, spades and clubs. A big difference when playing with these cards is that a 10 is valued higher than all the cards except for an ace.

Tips & Warnings

• Some decks come with jokers. Usually there are two in the package. You can use these in various games or you can take them out and not use them at all.
• Playing cards come in a variety of sizes, shapes and designs.