Card game culture has led to the near-universal popularity and availability of French-suited playing cards even in areas with their own regional card art. In Japan, a distinct 48-card hanafuda deck is popular. It is derived from 16th-century Portuguese decks, after undergoing a long evolution driven by laws enacted by the Tokugawa shogunate attempting to ban the use of playing cards The best-known deck internationally is the 52-card Anglo-American deck used for such games as poker and contract bridge. It contains one card for each unique combination of thirteen "ranks" and the four French "suits" "spades", "hearts", "diamonds", and "clubs". The ranks
Smear (card game) Smear (card game) Smear (also known as Schmier) is a North-American trick-taking card game of the All Fours group, and a variant of Pitch (Setback). Several slightly different versions are played in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, Minnesota, Northern and Central Iowa, Wisconsin and also in Ontario, Canada. It is highly likely that the name is related to the German word "schmieren", which is used in point-trick games such as Skat for the technique of discarding a high-value card on a trick which your partner is winning. The name might perhaps be connected to the fact that a high-scoring card