Playing card facts, games, and resources
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Basic Poker
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Crazy Eights
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Our virtual deck of cards tool allows you to shuffle a deck, select a card at random, or make your own random poker hand.
As we are enduring a global pandemic, people have been using our virtual deck as a way to play games socially distanced or even for magicians to allow their audience to choose cards.
There is a fascinating way in which the make-up of a deck can be explained, as a deck of playing cards corresponds to a calendar in many remarkable respects.
2 ColoursThe two colours of red and black correspond to the two parts of each day, namely daytime and night.
4 SuitsThe four suits correspond to the four seasons of spring, summer, autumn, and winter.
4 SuitsThe four suits correspond to the four seasons of spring, summer, autumn, and winter.
13 ValuesThe thirteen cards in each suit correspond to the 13 weeks in each quarter, and to the 13 lunar cycles.
12 Court CardsThe twelve court cards (all the jacks, queens and kings in a deck) correspond to the twelve months in a year.
52 CardsThe 52 cards in a deck correspond to the 52 weeks in a year.
Just how many exactly? 52! (52 factorial = 52x51x50x49 ... x2x1).
That's an 8 with around 67 zeroes!
This means that even if you shuffled a new arrangement every single second, it would still take millions of years to cover every combination. So next time you shuffle a deck of cards, think about how unique that arrangement and that moment really is.
Each time you pick up a shuffled deck, it's almost certain that the exact order of the cards in your hands has never existed before, and will likely never exist again!