A Playing card Is a piece of specially prepared heavy paper, thin cardboard, plastic-coated paper, cotton-paper blend, or thin plastic, marked with distinguishing motifs and used as one of a set for playing Card games. Playing cards are typically palm-sized for convenient handling.

   A complete set of cards is called a pack (UK English), deck (US English), or set (Universal), and the subset of cards held at one time by a player during a game is commonly called a hand. A pack of cards may be used for playing a variety of card games, with varying elements of skill and chance, some of which are played for money (e.g., poker andBlackjack games at a Casino). Playing cards are also used for Illusions, Cardistry, building Card structures, Cartomancy and Memory sport.

   Playing cards have been adapted for use by the Visually impaired by the inclusion of Large-print and/or Braille characters as part of the card. in addition to increasing the size of the suit symbol and the denomination text, large-print cards commonly reduce the visual complexity of the images for simpler identification. They may also omit the patterns of pips in favor of one large pip to identify suit. Some decks have larger indices, often for use in Stud poker games, where being able to read cards from a distance is a benefit and hand sizes are small.

   There are many national and producer variations. in most cases each card is marked with two braille characters in the same location as the normal corner markings. The two characters can appear in either vertical (one character below another) or horizontal (two characters side by side). In either case one character identifies the card suit and the other the cardDenomination. 1 for ace, 2 through 9 for the numbered cards, X (from Roman numerals) or the letter O for ten, J for jack, Q for queen, K for king. the suits are variously marked using D for Diamond, S for spade, C or X for club and H or K for heart.