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Card game glossary
Card games have their own vocabulary, and most of it is never explained — people assume you grew up with it. Every term below appears somewhere on this site, and wherever it does, it is marked like this so you can check it without leaving the page.
Trick-taking
A game where each player plays one card per round, and whoever plays the highest takes all of them.
Everyone plays one card into the middle — that is a trick — and whoever played the highest card wins all of them and leads the next round. Hearts, Spades, Euchre and Bridge are all trick-taking games. What separates them is what you are trying to do with the tricks you win: take as many as you promised, avoid taking any at all, or capture particular cards.
See also: Trick, Follow suit, Trump
Trick
One round where everyone plays a single card, and the highest card wins the lot.
One round of play. Each player in turn lays down a single card, and whoever played the highest card — counting trumps as higher than everything else — collects all of them and leads the next trick. A hand of thirteen cards each means thirteen tricks.
See also: Trick-taking, Trump, Follow suit
Follow suit
If a heart is led and you hold any heart, you must play one.
The rule that makes trick-taking games work. Whatever suit was led, you must play a card of that suit if you have one. Only when you are out of that suit may you play anything else, including a trump. Playing a different suit when you could have followed is called a renege, and in most games it costs you the hand.
Trump
A suit that outranks all others — the lowest trump beats the highest anything else.
A suit chosen to outrank the other three for the duration of a hand. The two of trumps beats the ace of every other suit. Some games fix the trump suit permanently (Spades is always spades), some choose it fresh each hand (Euchre), and some have no trump at all (Hearts).
See also: Trick, Follow suit, Bower
Void
Holding no cards at all in a given suit, which frees you to trump or discard.
Having no cards left in a particular suit. It is usually a good thing: because you cannot follow suit, you are free to play a trump and take the trick, or to throw away a card you did not want. Deliberately emptying yourself of a suit is called voiding.
See also: Follow suit, Trump
Meld
A matching group of cards — three of a kind, or a run in one suit.
A set of cards that count together rather than individually. A set is three or four of the same rank; a run is three or more in sequence in the same suit. In rummy games the whole point is arranging your hand into melds, because anything left outside them counts against you.
Deadwood
The cards left in your hand that are not part of any meld — they score against you.
Everything in your hand that is not part of a meld, and the number of penalty points those cards add up to. Face cards count ten, aces count one, everything else counts its face value. Getting your deadwood low enough to knock is the whole game in Gin Rummy.
Knock
Ending the hand once your unmatched cards total ten points or fewer.
Ending the hand deliberately. Once your deadwood is down to ten points or fewer you may knock, lay out your melds, and compare what is left against your opponent. Knocking early is safer than holding out for a perfect hand, because the longer you wait the more likely you are to be knocked on first.
Undercut
Beating the player who knocked by having equal or less deadwood than them — worth a bonus.
What happens when the player who knocked turns out to have as much deadwood as their opponent, or more. The knocker gets nothing, and the opponent scores the difference plus a bonus. It is the reason knocking with exactly ten deadwood is a gamble rather than a formality.
Bower
In Euchre, the two jacks that become the top trumps — right and left.
Euchre's signature rule. When a suit becomes trump, the jack of that suit becomes the highest card in the game (the right bower), and the jack of the other suit of the same color becomes the second highest (the left bower). The left bower stops being a member of its printed suit entirely — if hearts are trump, the jack of diamonds is a heart.
Nil
A bid promising to win no tricks at all — big bonus, big penalty.
A bid in Spades promising to take no tricks whatsoever. Making it is worth a large bonus and failing it costs the same amount. Your partner still bids normally and spends the hand trying to cover you by taking the tricks that would otherwise fall to you.
Bag
A trick you won but did not bid for — worth one point now, minus a hundred later.
An overtrick: a trick you took beyond what your partnership bid. Each is worth a single point, which sounds harmless, but every tenth bag costs you a hundred. Bags are why accurate bidding matters more than winning tricks in Spades.
Shooting the moon
Taking every single penalty card in Hearts, which flips the score onto everyone else.
Taking all thirteen hearts and the queen of spades in a single hand. Instead of collecting 26 penalty points, you give 26 to every other player. The defense is simple and easy to forget: if someone looks like they are taking everything, take one trick, any trick.
See also: Trick
Deck-building
A game where you start with a weak deck and buy better cards into it as you play.
A style of game where your deck is not fixed. You begin with a small, weak set of cards and spend what they generate on stronger ones, which shuffle into your own deck and come round again. The deck you finish with is one you assembled during the game.
Cardistry
Flourishing and juggling cards for display — no tricks, nothing hidden.
The art of manipulating cards purely for how it looks: fans, spreads, cuts and aerials. Unlike card magic there is nothing concealed and no trick to figure out — the display is the point. It asks different things of a deck than either magic or play does.
See also: Sleight of hand
Sleight of hand
A concealed move the audience is not meant to notice.
A hidden manoeuvre — a secret cut, a palmed card, a controlled shuffle — performed so the audience does not register it. Where cardistry is meant to be admired, sleight of hand is meant to go unseen.
Gaff card
A specially printed trick card, such as one with two faces or two backs.
A purpose-made card that is not what it appears: two faces, two backs, a blank, or a card printed short. Gaffs are made to match standard decks, which is why most card magic is performed with an ordinary-looking deck — the gaff has to be indistinguishable from the rest.
See also: Sleight of hand
Jumbo index
Corner pips printed large, so a card reads from across the table.
Cards printed with two large corner numbers instead of four small ones, so a hand can be read from across a table with only a corner lifted. Almost every poker set should be jumbo index; standard index suits games where you hold a fan close, like bridge or rummy.
Air-cushion finish
An embossed surface that traps air between cards so they slide and fan cleanly.
An embossed texture pressed into the card surface, trapping a thin layer of air between cards so they separate easily. It is what lets a deck fan and spring. Linoid is a similar finish under a different brand name; a smooth glossy finish looks expensive and clumps.
See also: Cardistry
Toploader
A rigid plastic sleeve that stops a single card bending.
A stiff plastic holder for one card, used for storage or posting. A card goes into a soft penny sleeve first and then into the toploader — never bare, because the rigid plastic will scuff the surface it is meant to protect.
See also: Double-sleeving
Double-sleeving
Putting a card in a close-fitting inner sleeve, then a normal outer one.
Two sleeves per card: a close-fitting inner sleeve, then a standard outer one, often loaded from opposite ends so the card is sealed against dust and humidity from both directions. It is the standard treatment for expensive cards that still get played.
See also: Toploader
TCG
Trading card game — Magic, Pokémon, Lorcana and the like.
Trading card game: one where players build their own decks from cards bought and traded individually, rather than from a fixed set in a box. Magic: The Gathering, Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh and Lorcana are the big ones, and they share the same accessory ecosystem.
See also: Double-sleeving, Toploader
Books, if you want the whole shelf
Our rules pages cover one game each, properly. These four cover hundreds between them, and are what to buy if you would rather have a book on the shelf than a tab open.
According to Hoyle
Richard L. Frey
The standard reference, in print in one form or another since 1742. Rules for several hundred games with no attempt to teach strategy — the book you reach for to settle an argument.
Hoyle's Rules of Games
Philip D. Morehead
The modern paperback most households own. Compact, cheap, and covers the games people actually play rather than every game ever recorded.
The Penguin Book of Card Games
David Parlett
The best single volume if you want to know why a game works, not just how. Parlett is a game historian and it shows — five hundred games with their origins and variants.
Card Games For Dummies
Barry Rigal
The gentlest starting point. Assumes nothing, explains the vocabulary as it goes, and covers the common household games properly before moving on.