Italian-suited playing cards
Italian-suited playing cards, also known as Italian playing cards or Latin-suited playing cards, are a deck of cards used in Italy and some other European countries. Unlike the standard French-suited playing cards used in many parts of the world, Italian-suited cards have a unique set of suits and designs.
The traditional Italian-suited deck consists of four suits: coins (denoted by the Italian word "denari" or "danari"), cups ("coppe" or "coppe"), swords ("spade"), and clubs ("bastoni" or "mazze"). Each suit typically contains ten pip cards numbered from 1 to 7 and three face cards: the knave (or jack), the knight (or cavalier), and the king. Some regional variations may have different names or designs for the face cards.
The pip cards in Italian-suited decks often depict the suit symbol repeated a certain number of times to represent the card's value. For example, the 2 of cups would have two cup symbols on the card, the 5 of swords would have five sword symbols, and so on.
Italian-suited playing cards are commonly used for traditional card games in Italy, such as Briscola, Scopone, and Scopone Scientifico. They can also be used for certain tarot card games, as the suits and numbers in Italian-suited decks correspond to those in some tarot decks.
It's worth noting that there are also regional variations of Italian-suited playing cards, which may have different suits, designs, or additional cards depending on the specific area or game being played.