CARD GAME

a game played for pleasure or gambling (or both) with one or more decks of playing cards (see playing card). Card games are probably coeval with cards themselves and may have been invented by the Chinese when they began shuffling paper money into various combinations. The Chinese are thought to have played both for and with this money, and in China today the general term for playing cards means paper tickets. Early playing cards proper were mostly numeral cards. In China they were used for games in which the higher cards captured the lower or in which they were formed into winning combinations. Those two principles are still the basis for the two great families of card games. Circular cards from India are said to have been used on chessboards in a game of pure skill, from which games of chance evolved, but no book gives any account of them. A Persian game, as nas, has also been called a link in the development of modern games. Cards and card games have been popular with all classes, despite sporadic attempts by monarchs, nobles, and governments to discourage their use by stringent laws. Both governments and churches condemned card playing in periods when gaming fever became widespread, bringing with it reckless wagering and a cruelly strict code of honour. Quarrels led to duels and to many causes clbres, including the Tranby Croft Baccarat Scandal of 1890, a libel suit over charges of cheating, which, because it involved royalty, rocked Victorian England. In modern times the social and intellectual prestige of games such as bridge and the dwindling of gambling practices led to an abatement of objections to card playing. The number of possible card games is practically unlimited, and a vast number of them have been devised. All depend either upon the concept of rank or that of cards in combinations. Some are designed for a specified number of players, a popular number being four; others may be played by any reasonable number. In most games a player's cards are known only to himself until exposed in conformity with the rules.