Laminated Playing Cards

The standard 52-card deck of French playing cards (54 counting jokers) is the most common deck of playing cards used today. It includes thirteen ranks in each of the four French suits: clubs (♣), diamonds (♦), hearts (♥) and spades (♠), with reversible "court" or face cards, Each suit includes an ace,  a king, queen and jack, each depicted with a symbol of its suit; and ranks two through ten, with each card depicting that many symbols (pips) of its suit. Anywhere from one to six (most often two or three since the mid-20th century) jokers, often distinguishable with one being more colourful than the other, are added to commercial decks, as some card games require these extra cards. Modern playing cards carry index labels on opposite corners or in all four corners to facilitate identifying the cards when they overlap and so that they appear identical for players on opposite sides. The most popular standard pattern of the French deck is sometimes referred to as "English" or "Anglo-American" pattern.

It has been shown that because of the large number of possibilities from ahuffling a 52-card deck (52!, equaling roughly 8.0658×10⁶⁷ or 80,658 viginitillion possibilities), it is probable that no two fair card shuffles have ever yielded exactly the same order of cards.

Although French-suited cards are the most common playing cards used internationally, there are many countries or regions that continue to use their own regional cards which are preferred for many games, although none have 52 cards. For example, 40- or 48-card Italian-suited packs are common in Italy and 40- and 48-card Spanish-suited packs on the Iberian peninsula. In addition, tarot cards are required for games such as French tarot (78 cards), which is widely played in France, and the Tarock family of games (42 or 54 cards) played in countries like Austria and Hungary.