John McLeod (card game researcher)


John McLeod is a British mathematician, author, historian and card game researcher who is particularly well known for his work on tarot games as well as his reference website pagat.com which contains the rules for over 500 card games worldwide. He is described as a "prominent member" of the International Playing Card Society.

Life

John McLeod was born in 1949. He studied mathematics at Cambridge University before entering industry. During his time at Cambridge, he came across a pack of tarot cards and "as I opened the box, I was immediately fascinated by the cards. They looked totally different from anything I had seen before". He was then a research student in the mathematics department of the university and spent many evenings playing the Austrian tarock game of Königrufen with his students.
Later McLeod toured Europe to study the individual variants of tarock games and captured his findings in the monumental 2-volume work A History of Games Played with the Tarot Pack which he co-authored with Professor Sir Michael Dummett, the "leading authority on the history of the Tarot". According to McLeod, Tarock belongs to one of the largest and perhaps most interesting families of card games in the world.
In 2005/06 McLeod and fellow researcher, Sally Prime, travelled to Vienna to participate in the international Tarock Cup where McLeod came 35 out of 100 participants.

pagat.com

McLeod created the website www.pagat.com in 1995. It has been described by card game historian, David Parlett as the "most important" card game website, its "intrinsic authority constantly enhanced by the contributions of interested and knowledgeable players from all over the world". The website describes the rules of over 500 contemporary card games world wide. It also categorises games by mechanism, objective and equipment used. The website is in English and German.

Works

McLeod's magnum opus is the two-volume set on the history of tarot card games which he co-authored with Michael Dummett. Volume One deals with games in which the Fool is used to excuse the player from following suit or playing a trump to a trick; Volume Two deals with games played in Central Europe from the late 18th century onward, in which the Fool is used as the highest trump.