Face card orientation

[StrangerCoug]

I e-mailed Barry about this and he said to either look at his links of the history of playing cards or post this in the forum; I think this is more useful. Most of the rest of this post is ad verbatim from the e-mail I gave him, but I've changed the wording of a few things to take into account that this is a forum post and not an e-mail.

I have an interest in the face card designs in the playing cards—specifically, their orientation.

For the most part, there are three of what I will call "configurations" in this post. For most decks I see, if you ignore the indexes and the bottom half of the card, the suit symbols will be on the left side of all twelve cards. In the notation I made up, this is a "12:0". There are also decks where this is only true of the kings, whereas the queens and jacks will have the suit symbols on the right (again, ignoring the indexes and the bottom half), which would be a 4:8 in my notation. Similar to a 4:8, and the original configuration the international deck, has the suit symbols on the left for the four kings, the queen of hearts, and the jack of spades and on the right side for the other queens and jacks, making it a 6:6. (I thought of a way to be more specific for non-standard decks, but that's beyond the scope of this post.)

What would each deck be under my face card system? (I don't have good reason to believe that most manufacturers use very different face card designs for their decks, so I will understand if you just tell me what each manufacturer uses for brevity.) Orientation information about both paper and plastic playing cards are welcome, as well as "computer decks" (decks that have no physical copies but are used on computer programs) and decks seen on TV that aren't available to the general public.

Decks I know:

AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE

• Caesar's Palace is 12:0.
• Goodall and Son is 12:0.
• Modiano is 12:0.
• Newt's Playing Cards are 12:0.
• Most decks by the U.S. Playing Card Company (Bicycle, Hoyle, etc.) are 12:0. When it started making the KEMs, it kept its 4:8 design for all except the 2007 WSOP cards, which are 12:0.
• Vegas is 12:0.
• The standard for jumbo cards seem to be either 6:6 or 4:8—I remember owning such a 6:6.

DECKS ON TV NOT AVAILABLE FOR PURCHASE

• The game show Card Sharks used a 12:0 in most incarnations. Not sure of the 2001 version, but either a 4:8 or a 6:6.

DECKS IN COMPUTER PROGRAMS

• Windows XP and prior used a 4:8 deck. I haven't played enough games on my Windows 7 machine to be 100% sure of the orientation of the new cards but I think they're 12:0 now.

[Martini]

Have you tried doing a Google image search for "playing cards"? That will give you a lot of decks to look at.

[StrangerCoug]

Remember that I'm looking for information tied to a known deck, but I'll list what that gave me:

• Goodall and Son is 12:0.
• Caesar's Palace is 12:0.
• The standard for jumbo cards seem to be either 6:6 or 4:8—I remember owning such a 6:6.

There is a collector, mostly of specialty decks, that uploaded court card pictures of a lot of his decks—if I can find it again that'll be a very good wealth of information.

Edit: Oh, and I'm getting a 12:0 for Vegas.

[Milo]

For what purpose, if I may ask?

[austin5string]

For what purpose, if I may ask?

I've read this thread at least a few times, and I've been wondering the exact same thing. 

[StrangerCoug]

Oh, just one of my crazy fascinations.

[bigstu]

Not sure either but what about Copaq's some of the decks the A's 4 pip rest of deck not....

I never could get used to designs placement on the front of cards either....

Also have see Cards made for Blackjack where 10- A is high in corner and 2-9 .5 to .75 inches lower

[Dr. Neau]

The giant deck that comes with "The Drinking Game" that I got in college is 12:0.