Hello, and today I'm going to talk to you about cards. And I don't mean birthday cards or Christmas cards, I mean playing cards. I found that a lot of my students play cards but they don't know the language that we use in English when we're playing games with cards. So I'm going to talk about that language with you today.
Right, so the first thing I need to do is to get myself a box of cards and I've got one here I'm going to open it and take out the cards here. Now the cards all together are called a pack. I'm going to talk about what we call the French suited playing cards or sometimes called the poker pack. These are the cards that we use, usually in the UK and in the United States. There are of course, lots of different types of packs in European countries. For example, in Spain, there's the 48-card, Spanish suited pack, and they have different designs on the cards.
Now cards have been around for a long time. They perhaps originated in Egypt, or at least they came from Egypt into Europe around 1370 and arrived in Britain from France in about 1480 - that's the 15th century. As they arrived from France. We adopted the French suits, that's the French designs on the cards. And so the suits or the designs are similar to the French cards. So let's look at the designs then. There are 52 cards in a pack divided into four suits. So 13 cards in each suit, and the suits are called hearts, diamonds, clubs and spades. The heart is a typical heart shape and red. Then the diamond is a typical diamond shape, a sort of a rhombus, and also red. Then we have the clubs and the spades. Now those are strange words, aren't they? In fact, clubs is, if you look at the design, it looks like the leaf of a plant, which is called a clover. Now, a clover has a leaf with three round lobes on it or three round parts to it. And in fact, this suit was called the clover in French, and we called it clubs now. Now, a club is a weapon, a weapon used for fighting and hitting somebody over the head with. The club is black. Then you have the spades. A spade in English is something that we use for digging in the garden with but it seems that the origin of the word does not refer to a spade for digging, but probably comes from the French sabre, which is a sword. And also if you think [of it] in Spanish, espada is a very similar word as well, which also means sword.
The different suits, as I say these are the suits: hearts, diamonds, clubs and spades are divided into three picture cards: the jack, the queen and the king. Now the queen the king - that's fairly straightforward. The jack is also called a knave. A knave is a rascal, a bad person, somebody you can't trust. However, it seems that it comes from the German word knabe and knabe meaning child. So it's more than likely that the knave or jack is the child or prince of the king and queen.
Now, the other cards are the ace, which is like a one. And then you have the numbers or the pips. And they run from the deuce, which is the 2 [then] 3-4-5-6-7-8-9 and 10. So the jack is often 11, the queen, a 12, and the king, a 13. And an ace can sometimes be higher than the king, or sometimes it's just a one.
Oh, I said there are 52 cards in a pack. In fact, there are 54 because there two cards that we don't usually use, and they're called jokers, and the joker is a sort of comedian, who used to make the king laugh in his court - the joker, and he's actually designed like that on the card. And there are two of them - a black one, and a red one. They are used in some games, or they're very useful as well if you lose a card, and you can use these as a substitute for a card that's been lost in the pack.
Right, I'm going to now look at some of the language that we use while we're actually playing the game. So, the first thing you need to do is to pick up your cards and one person will deal to the other players - so to deal is to give the cards to the other players, and he is therefore, the dealer. Oh, before he deals though, he needs to shuffle. To shuffle is usually, if you're right handed, you hold the cards in your left hand, and then you pick up a few with your right hand, and you throw them in small piles at to the top and bottom of the pack therefore mixing them up very well. Another way you can do it is to pick up half the pack in one hand, and pick up the other half of the pack in the other hand, and flip them all together. So they all nicely mix - like that.
So once you've shuffled, you ask the person to your right to cut the pack, that is to pick up half the deck or pack and place it face down on the table, and then pick up the lower half and put that on the top. So that makes sure that the dealer isn't cheating, which is to organize the cards in a way secretly, so that the others don't know. So then ideal the dealer deals, depending on the game, a number of cards to each player alternately.
Then, when you've dealt the number of cards you need, you place the rest of the pack face down on the table. Now perhaps you need to turn over the card on the top of the deck and place it face up, so that you can see it. Each player picks up their cards. And they look at them secretly so that others can't see them and arrange them into the different combinations according to the game. So the cards that you pick up and have in your hands are in fact called a hand of cards.
The first person to play leads, that's to put a card down on the table. Now you can play alone [without a partner], for example, such games as cribbage. Or perhaps you play with a partner for example, games like bridge, and whist. Now, in those games, poker is another one as well, you have combinations, and those combinations have names. Now the typical ones are a run. Now a run or sequence is usually a number of cards, one after the other 2-3-4-5 - jack, queen, king, for example.
Then you have a flush, a flush are a number of cards in the same suit. So if you're playing poker, for example, it would be usually five cards, all in the same suit. So five hearts or five diamonds, etc. Then you can get perhaps a combination of a run and a flush. For example, the best one is when you get 10, jack, queen, king, ace, all in the same suit. And that's called a royal flush. Then are the combinations are a pair, which would be two cards the same, or the same number. So two fours, two eights, two queens, for example. And then three of a kind, so that would be three cards of the same denomination: three 10s, three jacks, for example.
Now sometimes you may be playing for money. And if you play for money, you put the money in the middle of the table, and that is called the pot or the kitty.
One last thing which has been [was] interesting recently with the last President Donald Trump. He often took advantage of his surname and made a play on words with a term which comes from playing cards. In some games like bridge, you have a suit which is dominant, which is higher than the other suits. And those cards or that suit, are called the trumps. And so to trump somebody would be to put down a card from a dominant suit onto a non-trump. So perhaps I put down a king and think it's very high, but then if somebody puts down a two of a trump - and then I'm trumped. My king is of less value - to be trumped - they call that. Donald Trump often used that pun, that play on words during his presidency.
Right. That's all I'm going to say about cards today. I hope that's been useful. That's all for now.
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