French-suited deck vs the Spanish deck: cards and suits
What the French-suited 52-card deck is, why Spaniards call it English or American, and how it compares with the 40 and 48-card Spanish deck and its suits.
The French-suited deck is the standard pack used across Britain and most of the world: 52 cards in four suits of 13 (spades, hearts, diamonds and clubs), each with an ace, the numbers 2 to 10 and three court cards, the jack, queen and king, usually with two jokers added. In Spain it is known as the baraja francesa, and also as the English, American or poker deck. All four names describe the same pack: the suits were created in France around 1480, the court designs used today descend from the English pattern, itself based on cards imported from Rouen, and the corner indices and the joker came from the United States in the nineteenth century.
Spain, however, has its own traditional deck. The Spanish deck has 48 cards, or 40 once the eights and nines are removed, in the Latin suits of coins (oros), cups (copas), swords (espadas) and clubs (bastos). There is no ten and no queen: the court cards are the knave (sota), the knight (caballo) and the king, numbered 10, 11 and 12. Suits can also be told apart by small breaks in the frame line: none for coins, one for cups, two for swords and three for clubs.
- Suit equivalents: hearts and cups, diamonds and coins, clubs and bastos, spades and swords. The English word spade itself comes from the Spanish espada.
- Court equivalents: jack for sota, queen for caballo, king for king.
- Typical games: poker, bridge, rummy and patience with the French-suited deck; mus, tute, brisca and chinchón with the Spanish one.
Most Spanish games can be played with a standard pack by taking out the eights, nines and tens. Escoba, chinchón and brisca work well this way. Mus is the exception: its threes count as kings and its twos as aces, and its signals are learnt with Spanish cards.
All the games mentioned here can be played with a single 52-card pack from our playing cards range.
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