General Rules
Applying to all Card Games

Certain customs of card play are so well established that it is unnecessary to repeat them as part of the additional poker rules for each and every game. The following rules can be assumed to apply to any game, in the absence of any law expressly stating a different rule.

The Pack or Deck

The standard deck or pack of 52 cards contains four suits each identified by its symbol, or pip; spades (♠ ), hearts (♥ ), diamonds (♦ ), clubs (♣ ), thirteen cards of each suit; ace (A), King (K), queen (Q), jack (J), 10, 9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2. Wherever the pack used for a game is stated to be “52 cards,” reference is to this standard pack. Packs of less than 52 cards are usually formed by stripping cards out of the standard pack. The various depleted packs may then be defined by the total of cards remaining, for example:
40 cards (five is the lowest remaining rank)
36 cards (six is the lowest remaining rank)
32 cards (seven is the lowest remaining rank)
24 cards (nine is the lowest remaining rank)

The 48-card Spanish deck still bears the old suits of Cups, Swords, Coeur, and Batons. The 40-card Italian deck, which is used in several of the games in this book, is made by stripping out eights, nines, and tens from a regular 52-card deck. The 32 -card deck is made up of stripping our sixes, fives, fours, threes, twos.
A double deck is formed by mixing two 52-card packs together, and so has 104 cards (plus one or more joker, in some games). A tripe-deck packet is formed by mixing three 52-cards packs together. Some card packets used in banking card games make use of four, five, six, and eight decks shuffled together. In some of the Canasta games that are described in Chapter 6 as many as four standard decks plus eight jokers (216 cards) are used in play. A Pinochle deck of 48 cards consists of two cards in the four familiar suits (spades, hearts, diamonds, and clubs) in each of the following denominations: ace (high), king, queen, jack, ten, nine (low). In assembling any multi-packs it is usually desirable to use cards of identical back design and color.
Various other kinds of card decks have been marketed in the past half century, such as circle (round ) decks and cards marked with additional symbols, but they have all fallen by the wayside and do not merit inclusion in these pages.

How to select Partnerships

Partnerships are determined by prearrangement or by cutting. Rules to determine partnerships by cutting follow:

1. The four play poker players seat themselves at any four places around the table; where they sit is for the moment irrelevant.
2. Any player may shuffle the pack and offer the pack to any other player for a cut.
3. For the purpose of cutting for partners and seating positions, the cards rank ace (high) K-Q-J-10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2 (LOW). When cutting for partners, jokers are excluded from the deck.
4. Each player cuts a group of cards from the pack immediately exposing to the others the bottom card of his group. Players cutting the two low cards become partners. So do the players cutting the two high cards. Although it may be agreed to keep the same partnership throughout several games, any player may nevertheless at the end of the poker game demand a new draw for partners and seating position.
5. If two, three, or four players cut cards of equal rank, the suits then rank spades (highest ), hearts, diamonds, clubs (lowest).
6. If in cutting, a player exposes more than one card or cuts one of five cards resting either at the top or bottom of the pack, he must cut again.
7. The player who has cut the highest card may choose any seat. His partner sits opposite him. The opposing partnership auction takes the remaining seats