Jack | playing card (2024)

…owes its modern name of jack to this game. Originally, all fours was regarded as a lower-class game—it was much played by African Americans on slave plantations—but in the 19th century it broadened its social horizons and gave rise to more-elaborate games such as cinch (see below), pitch, smear, and…

The game ends when any player’s last card is played. A player with two cards in hand must announce, “One…

If the starter is a jack, dealer immediately pegs (scores) two points, called “two for his heels.” If the starter is any other card, the jack of that suit—formerly called “knave noddy,” an unmistakable link with the earlier game—is worth one point to the holder for “his nob” but is…

…trumps are Jucker, meaning “jack.” This word may also have influenced the choice of the term joker for the extra card introduced into American euchre in the 1860s to act as the “best bower,” or topmost trump; bower is from German Bauer, literally “farmer” but also meaning “jack.” Euchre…

…descending order joker (“best bower”), jack of trump (“right bower”), jack of the same colour as trump (“left bower”), followed by A, K, Q, 10, 9, 8, 7. Cards rank A, K, Q, J (if not left bower), 10, 9, 8, 7 in the other suits. In a no-trump game…

… the highest card is the jack, called jass, worth 20 points, followed by the 9, called menel, worth 14 points, followed downward by A, 10, K, Q, 8, 7, with the same values as nontrump suits.

…therefore replaced with J for jack. Originally this was the name applied to the knave of trump in the old game of all fours, which had already achieved wide popularity in preference to the archaic-sounding knave in other games. Sweden continues awkwardly to exhibit K for köning (king) and Kn…

…the playing surface; when a jack is turned up, the first to slap it takes the entire centre stack and places it with his own. (In some games it is placed underneath, though it is usually shuffled in with the rest of the player’s stack.) Whoever accumulates the entire deck…