Gambling terms, explained straight

Card Games

Card game terms and phrases

Card game terms and phrases are the specialised vocabulary used to describe the rules, actions, and components of card games.

Scope
Covers terms common to many card games, including trick, trump, suit, deal, and hand.
Sources
Glossaries from Pagat, Wikipedia, and specialist game pages.

Key points

  • A trick is a set of cards played in one round, each player contributing one card; the winner leads the next trick 1.
  • A trump suit outranks all others during a trick, often determined by bidding or the turn of a card 1.
  • The deal is the distribution of cards to players, usually one at a time in clockwise order 2.
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Sources

  1. Trick-taking game en.wikipedia.org Defines trick and trump for trick-taking games.
  2. Glossary of card game terms en.wikipedia.org Provides general card game term definitions including deal.

Sources are drawn from regulators, universities and published research, and each one is labelled with what it actually is — a preprint is not called a paper. Bookmaker and affiliate pages are never cited here, because a page that sells betting is not a neutral authority on it.

Written and maintained by Ellis Warrender, writer and maintainer.

Last updated 28 July 2026. Spotted an error? Tell me and it gets fixed and logged on the corrections page.