PING: Card Players (re: design the perfect deck)

[albionmoonlight]

So we all know what the standard deck of cards looks like. 4 "suits" of cards, each suit containing 13 cards ranked in order. Depending on the game, one of the cards in the suit can represent both the high and the low rank. Most decks also come standard with two "wild cards" that are not affiliated with a rank or a suit. In addition, three of the highest ranked cards tend to be decorated differently than the lower ranked cards, which almost never makes a difference in game play, but may have a psychological effect on the players.

There are thousands of card games and variations thereof. Many of them involve comparing a hand of cards that you possess to those of your opponent(s) and attempting to have the "better" hand. "Better" hands tend to involve matching cards of a particular rank or suit (or getting a specific sequence of ranks). The more statistically improbable a particular combination is, the more value tends to be given to that combination.

We all know and love the standard deck of cards. Any serious or semi-serious card player can recite the odds of a particular hand occuring in his sleep. Indeed, most card players would agree that having deep knowledge of the odds of certain cards appearing at any given time in a standard deck of cards represents the foundation of good card playing.

There is, of course, no way that we will replace the standard deck of cards, upon which everything from high-stakes poker to your great-grandmother's gin rummy game is based. (Not to mention more serious and complicated games such as bridge or whist).

I am also confident (though I have not looked it up) that the standard deck of cards evolved as a historical accident. No one man set down to create the standard deck. It evolved over time and, eventually, mankind settled upon it. In other words, the deck was not intelligently designed.

So let's run a thought experiment. You will go back in time to when cards began and design the perfect deck of cards. Your design will be the one that catches on and will become the standard deck. Let's say that card games will still evolve in basically the same manner. Matching ranks and suits will still be the primary method of "making" hands. Games will still range from things as simple as "high card" to things as complicated as bridge, and will include most everything in the middle. And lots of people will figure out how that you can gamble money on certain of these games.

So, assuming that you are given this power, can you design a deck that would be "better" than the standard 13 rank, 4 suit deck with one card per suit that can be high or low, certain cards being painted, and two "wild cards" per deck?

[QuikSand]

In the interests of promoting real responses rather than jokes, a few off-the-cuff thoughts...

-If you want versatility, (which you do here) then I think there has to be balance and probably symmetry -- I don't think you could get away with a structure that had different suits (assuming we retain the concept of suits) with different components. Good, balanced games require symmetry -- so I think the perfect deck probably needs to have that at its core. That wipes out things like the "Great Dalmuti" deck, where there are a different number of each rank of card (9 nines, 6 sixes, etc.) and somethnig akin to Magic: the Gathering where each color has its own strengths and weaknesses. I think you're pretty well obligated to have a system that more or less resembles the current deck -- some number of suits, and each one identical within.

-My guess is that the number of "suits" (or some parallel concept) has to be manageable. I know psychologists have studied things like how many things can we remember/think about at once -- and frequently the outer bounds seem to be something like six or seven. My best guess is that any deck structured with more suits/categories than this would become too unweidly. I don't have any way to say that four suits is ideal (without letting real-world knowledge play an admitted role) but I suspect that it isn't far from a good breaking point.

[QuikSand]

Numbers on cards also seems to be the obvious way to make things simple to remember for the "what beats what" system. Nothing obvious about the notion of using structured face cards rather than using numbered cards beyond ten -- but the number that are involved in the standard deck certainly seems manageable. Again, it seems like a pretty fair equilibrium there already.

[QuikSand]

Okay, trying to come up with something new... here's a thought:

Replace the current two, nondescript "jokers" with a set of four equivalent cards that are visibly alignable with each suit. If you wanted to just use two of them for some game, that would still certainly be possible, but having the potential for a spade-only bug or wild card might add more flexibility to their usefulness, without expanding the deck much beyind its current scope.

[Toddzilla]

I am also confident (though I have not looked it up) that the standard deck of cards evolved as a historical accident. No one man set down to create the standard deck. It evolved over time and, eventually, mankind settled upon it. In other words, the deck was not intelligently designed.I just wanted to dispute this somewhat - not to argure intelligent design, but that there was thought behind the deck. Meaning some of the decisions were made on purpose. To wit:

4 suits = 4 seasons
52 cards = 52 weeks in a year

[albionmoonlight]

My first thought is that 13 seems like a weird number. I wonder if 12 or 16 ranks per suit would better faciliate people figuring out odds and the like.

[QuikSand]

I just wanted to dispute this somewhat - not to argure intelligent design, but that there was thought behind the deck. Meaning some of the decisions were made on purpose. To wit:

4 suits = 4 seasons
52 cards = 52 weeks in a year

I have heard it argued that this correlation was unintentional, basically coincidence... but have no idea what the accepted truth of the matter is.

[QuikSand]

Another revisionist thought...

With a deck of any design, even the current, you could market something like a "Second Deck" as a separate product. The second deck would have the same number of suits and ranks, but just new suits. So, sitting aside a current 52-card deck, you'd have another 52-card second deck, which would have 13 cards in each of four new suits -- perhaps stuff from the Lucky Charms collection. This would open up a wider variety of games possible with 8 suits, without necessarily screwing up the simpler common deck.

(I would be surprised if something like this didn't already exist, incidentally, but it clearly hasn't really caught on)

[cthomer5000]

I have heard it argued that this correlation was unintentional, basically coincidence...

This mirrors anything I've ever read, because there was certainly historical decks that were fairly widely used that were either smaller or larger and had more suits.

Also, I would think the evolution of the Ace card must have been fairly arbitrary, or at least certainly unique to some decks. It acts like no other card in the current deck.

[Brillig]

Can't believe no one has invoked this yet: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Playing_cards

If one believes in the evolution of ideas, it sounds like the current deck has been around for 700-odd years. It's not like there hasn't been competition (see the lower section of the wiki article on decks currently used in Europe), but the 52-card standard deck seems destined to remain.

It's interesting to note that almost all variant decks are smaller, and retain the four-suit structure. A five-suit deck is probably a little beyond what the common individual wants to deal with, but I'm a little puzzled by the lack of a three-suit deck - a three-suiter with a rock-paper-scissors relation between the suits would seem to open up some interesting gaming values.

[QuikSand]

I'm a little puzzled by the lack of a three-suit deck - a three-suiter with a rock-paper-scissors relation between the suits would seem to open up some interesting gaming values.

Interesting idea.

While it's obviously more elegant with three suits, and easier to remember, I guess you could set up something along Stratego lines for use with four suits:

Spades
Hearts
Diamonds
Clubs
...but Clubs beat Spades.

Not perfectly parallel, but it also might make for an interesting game environment somehow.