Clubs (suit)


Clubs is one of the four suits of playing cards in the standard French deck. It corresponds to the suit of Acorns in a German deck.
Its original French name is Trèfle which means "clover" and the card symbol depicts a three-leafed clover leaf. The Italian name is Fiori. The English name "Clubs" is derived from the suit of Bastoni in Italian-Spanish suited cards.
In Germany, this suit is known as Kreuz, especially in the International Skat Regulations. In Austria, by contrast, it is almost exclusively called Treff, a reference to the French name, especially in the game of Bridge, where French names generally predominate, for example Cœur is used instead of Herz.
In Skat and Doppelkopf, Clubs are the highest-ranked suit. In Bridge, Clubs are the lowest suit.

Characteristics

The symbol for the suit of Clubs depicts a very stylised three-leaf clover with its stalk oriented downwards.
Generally the suit of Clubs is black in colour. However, the suit may also be green, for example as sometimes used in Bridge.
The gallery below shows a suit of Clubs from a French suited deck of 52 cards. Not shown is the Knight of Clubs used in tarot card games:

Coding

The symbol ♣ is already in the CP437 and thus also part of Windows WGL4. In Unicode a black ♣ and a white ♧ Club symbol are defined:
SymbolUnicodeEntity in HTML
♣U+2663 BLACK CLUB SUIT♣ or ♣
♧U+2667 WHITE CLUB SUIT♧

Literature