Card Game Trivia Quiz Questions And Answers

Card game trivia quiz questions and answers about Bridge, Old Maid, Poker and More!

Card Game Trivia Quiz Questions And Answers

What is a Card Game?
A: A card game is any game using playing cards as the primary device with which the game is played, be they traditional or game-specific.

A small number of card games played with traditional decks have formally standardized rules, but most are what?
A: Folk games whose rules vary by region, culture, and person.

Games using playing cards exploit the fact that cards are individually identifiable how?
A: From one side only, so that each player knows only the cards he holds and not those held by anyone else.

For this reason card games are often characterized as what?
A: Games of chance or “imperfect information”—as distinct from games of strategy or “perfect information,” where the current position is fully visible to all players throughout the game.

A card game is played with a deck or pack of playing cards which are identical in what?
A: Size and shape.

Each card has what two sides?
A: The face and the back.

Normally the backs of the cards are what?
A: Indistinguishable.

The faces of the cards may all be unique, or there can be what?
A: Duplicates.

The composition of a deck is known to whom?
A: Each player.

In some cases several decks are shuffled together to form what?
A: A single pack or shoe.

When did the first playing cards appear?
A: In the 9th century during Tang-dynasty China.

During the Ming dynasty (1368–1644) what were widely featured on the faces of playing cards?
A: Characters from popular novels such as the Water Margin.

Mahjong tiles are a 19th-century invention based on what?
A: Three-suited money playing card decks, similar to the way in which Rummikub tiles were derived recently from modern Western playing cards.

The same kind of games can also be played with tiles made of what?
A: Wood, plastic, bone, or similar materials.

What are the most notable examples of such tile sets?
A: Dominoes, mahjong tiles and Rummikub tiles.

Chinese dominoes are also available as what?
A: Playing cards.

Legend dates the invention of dominoes to what year ?
A: 1112, and the earliest known domino rules are from the following decade.

When did playing cards first appear in Europe?
A: In the last quarter of the 14th century.

The earliest European references speak of a Saracen or Moorish game called what?
A: Naib.

An almost complete Mamluk Egyptian deck of 52 cards in a distinct oriental design has survived from around the same time, with what four suits?
A: Swords, polo sticks, cups and coins and the ranks king, governor, second governor, and ten to one.

The 1430s in Italy saw the invention of what?
A: The tarot deck, a full Latin-suited deck augmented by suitless cards with painted motifs that played a special role as trumps.

Where are tarot card games are still played with (subsets of) these decks?
A: In parts of Central Europe.

A full tarot deck contains how many cards in each suit?
A: 14.

Today most tarot decks sold in North America are of what type?
A: The occult type, and are closely associated with fortune telling.

The French suits were introduced around 1480 and, in France, mostly replaced what?
A: The earlier Latin suits of swords, clubs, cups and coins.

The suit symbols, being very simple and single-color, could be stamped onto the playing cards to create a deck, thus only requiring special full-color card art for what?
A: The court cards.

This drastically simplifies the production of a deck of cards versus the traditional Italian deck, which used what?
A: Unique full-color art for each card in the deck.

When did the French suits become popular in English playing cards?
A: In the 16th century (despite historic animosity between France and England), and from there were introduced to British colonies including North America.

What is the best-known deck internationally?
A: The 52-card Anglo-American deck used for such games as poker and contract bridge.

It contains one card for each what?
A: Unique combination of thirteen ranks and the four French suits spades, hearts, diamonds, and clubs.

The ranks (from highest to lowest in bridge and poker) are what?
A: Ace, king, queen, jack (or knave), and the numbers from ten down to two (or deuce).

The trump cards and knight cards from the French playing tarot are what?
A: Not included.

Originally the term knave was more common than what?
A: "Jack"; the card had been called a jack as part of the terminology of All-Fours since the 17th century, but the word was considered vulgar.

Because the card abbreviation for knave ("Kn") was so close to that of the king, it was very easy to do what?
A: To confuse them, especially after suits and rankings were moved to the corners of the card in order to enable people to fan them in one hand and still see all the values.

Based on the association of card games and gambling what did Pope Benedict XIV do?
A: He banned card games on October 17, 1750.

Old Maid, Phase 10, Rook, and Uno are examples of games that can be played with one or more 52-card decks but are usually played with what?
A: Custom decks.

Cards play an important role in board games like what?
A: Risk and Monopoly.

Historically, card games such as whist and contract bridge were opportunities for what?
A: Quiet socializing.

Any specific card game imposes restrictions on what?
A: The number of players.

Card games for one player are known as what?
A: Solitaire or patience card games.

Generally speaking, they are in many ways special and atypical, although some of them have given rise to two- or multi-player games such as what?
A: Spite and Malice.

In card games for two players, usually not all cards are distributed to the players, as they would otherwise have what?
A: Perfect information about the game state.

Many multi-player games started as what?
A: Two-player games that were adapted to a greater number of players.

One way of extending a two-player game to more players is by doing what?
A: Building two teams of equal size.

A common case is four players in two fixed partnerships, sitting crosswise as in what card games?
A: Whist and contract bridge.

Partners sit opposite to each other and cannot see what?
A: Each other's hands.

If communication between the partners is allowed at all, then it is usually restricted to what?
A: A specific list of permitted signs and signals. Most cut-throat card games are round games, i.e. they can be played by how many players?
A: Any number of players starting from two or three, so long as there are enough cards for all.