Cards are a set of
rectangular pieces of cardboard with markings on one side and a uniform pattern on
the other. The collection of all cards is called a "deck," and a normal
deck of cards consists of 52 cards having 13 distinct values for each of four different
"suits." The suits are called clubs (), diamonds (), hearts (), and spades (). Spades and clubs are colored black, while hearts and
diamonds are colored red. The cards of each suit are numbered 1 through 13, where
the special terms ace (1), jack (11), queen (12), and king (13) are used instead
of numbers 1 and 11-13. However, in bridge and a number
of other games, the ace is considered the highest card, and so would be assigned
a value of 14 instead of 1.
The randomization of the order of cards in a deck is called shuffling. Cards are used in many gambling games (such as poker),
and the investigation of the probabilities of various outcomes in card games was
one of the original motivations for the development of modern probability
theory.