card game, game played for pleasure or gambling (or both) with one or more decks of playing cards. Games using playing cards exploit the fact that cards are individually identifiable from one side only, so that each player knows only the cards he holds and not those held by anyone else.
For this reason card games are often characterized as games of chance or “imperfect information”—as distinct from games of strategy or “perfect information,” where the current position is fully visible to all players throughout the game. This characterization is inadequate, however. For example, in backgammon, a dice game, the starting position is predetermined and equal, and all subsequent moves are fully known to both players. What constitutes the imperfection of its information is the unpredictability of future dice rolls. Dice games are therefore games of future imperfect information because whatever strategic skill they entail must be based on an assessment of future events, chiefly through the mathematics of probability theory. In contrast, the chance element of card games is a result of shuffling the cards before play in order to randomize their initial distribution. Thereafter, skillful play largely consists of determining the distribution of cards through observation, which, depending on the game, may include observation of players’ bids, discards, and trick play. Card games are therefore games of “past imperfect information” or, more significantly, increasing information. This is not to assert that all card games are intellectual or even demand much skill. There are even card games where all the cards are dealt faceup, especially varieties of solitaire, which makes them games of perfect information.
Intrinsic evidence suggests that a trick-taking game without any special suit, or trump suit, along with playing cards, reached Europe in the 14th century, likely by passage through the Islamic world. The earliest game known by name—karnöffel, played from 1428 in Germany—was such, though certain cards of a randomly selected suit possessed trick-taking powers of varying degrees of superiority. Trump suits as such were a European invention (see tarot game), as was the subsequent idea of bidding to select a trump suit (see ombre). Gambling games of the point-count, or blackjack, type, known from the 15th century, may have been derived from dice games, as they ignore any distinction between suits. Gambling games of the vying, or poker, type are known from the 16th century, as is noddy, the ancestor of cribbage. Many so-called children’s games, such as beggar-my-neighbour and old maid, derive from old drinking and gambling games. Other families of games, particularly non-trick-taking games, reached Europe from the Far East, especially from China. They include the casino family (17th century), the rummy family (19th century), which probably derived from mah-jongg, and the president family (20th century).
The popularity of cards as gaming materials derives from a unique combination of characteristics:
Some of these features relate to the gambling potential of card games, but a persistent view of cards as gambling games is both outmoded and perverse. An intrinsic gambling game is one in which players can exert no control over the outcome, so that the only sustainable interest in playing lies in the thrill or fear of winning or losing money. Of course, any game can be played for money, but some games, such as bridge or chess, offer sufficient mental rewards to maintain players’ interest in lieu of any financial incentive.
Most Western card games are trick games, in which each player in turn plays a card to the table, and whoever plays the best card wins them all. These cards constitute a trick, which the winner places facedown in a pile before playing the first card to the next trick. The best card is usually the highest-ranking card of the same suit as the card led—that is, of the same suit as the first card played to the trick. Anyone who fails to follow suit to the card led cannot win the trick, no matter how high the card. Winning a trick is doubly advantageous, since the player who wins a trick not only gains material but also chooses which suit to lead next. A player who leads a suit that no one can follow (because no one else has any cards of that suit left) wins that trick regardless of card rank.
Trick play can be varied in several ways. The most significant is by some process of designating one of the four suits as a special trump suit, superior in power to the other three suits. Generally, this enables a player who is out of whatever suit was led to play a trump card instead, an act known as trumping or ruffing, which will beat any cards of the suit led.
Trick card games may be subdivided as follows:
Games based on principles other than trick taking include:
