A history of… playing cards

Michie · Jan 31, 2025

There is a good reason that the Ace of Spades is known as the 'death card'…

I have held playing cards in my hands countless thousand times over the decades, but until today it never occurred to me to wonder where and when they came from. It turns out that they have a long and fascinating history which I will share with you now!

Mamluk kanjifah playing cards (Wikipedia CC-BY-4.0)

Playing cards were probably invented in China during the Tang Dynasty (618–907 CE) though they were rather different to the ones that we are familiar with today. There is a reference to something called the ‘leaf game’ being played by Princess Tongchang in 868 CE but it is unclear exactly what these leaves were. We know that this game often involved drinking – it was reported that the Emperor Muzong went on a 25-day drinking spree in the year 969 and on New Year’s Eve (26th February) “he played the game of leaves with his ministers”. This game would have been yezi ge (Rules of Leaves) but as long ago as 1067 CE it was recorded that there was no one alive who remembered how to play the game.

It is thought that these early cards were used in conjunction with dice, or were simply drawn at random and the recipients had to perform the forfeits (generally consuming alcohol) that were indicated upon them. Early in the second millennium domino cards emerged; these were, as the name suggests, paper equivalents of domino tiles, and as such very different from modern playing cards. The true forerunners of today’s cards were most likely Chinese money cards which, significantly, had four different suits: cash (single coins), strings (of cash), myriads (of strings) and tens of myriads. These cards were combined to form a deck of 38 cards:

Continued below.