Learn English vocabulary for card games

Who's ready to play some cards?

Hey, everyone.

I'm Alex.

Thanks for clicking, and welcome to this lesson on card game vocabulary.

In this lesson, I will teach you the most common vocabulary that you will hear around

any card table, whether you're at the casino or whether you're just playing at home with

family and friends, I guarantee you will hear these words.

So, I have a pack of regular, standard cards.

I have a pack of Uno, which is a wonderful family game.

I highly recommend it.

And you know what?

I'm going to open these up to start things off, because to play, you need - what is this?

This is a deck of cards or a pack of cards.

Kind of like a pack of cigarettes as well, right?

You can get cigarettes in a pack.

The deck really refers to the collection of cards - let's just throw that away - the deck

refers to the collection of cards once you take it out of the pack.

So here, I've got all these cards, I have this deck, I have some jokers, some instructions.

Jokers, jokers, instructions.

Don't need those, alright?

And I have my deck of cards now.

So, let's say, what game are we playing?

You're playing Texas Hold 'Em Poker.

Are you playing Rummy, which I don't know how to play, but I know the name of it.

So, first thing before playing any card game, obviously, you should go over the rules.

To go over the rules means to review the rules.

A very common thing that you will hear people say at a card table after, you know, describing

the rules is "The first person to - hmm - wins", okay?

So, the first person in Uno, the first person to 500 points wins.

The first person to get rid of all their cards wins.

The first person to collect, I don't know, five aces wins.

There aren't five aces in a pack, that was a trick.

Alright?

Now, any card game, you need a dealer.

The dealer is the person who distributes or gives out or deals the cards.

So, after you pick a dealer, the dealer will, better than me, shuffle the deck, okay?

So, to shuffle just means to mix the deck, mix up the cards so that there's no cheating,

okay?

Now, a dealer might also ask someone to cut the deck.

So, you give the deck of cards to the person next to you and say, "Hey, can you cut the

deck?"

Just take from anywhere and basically cut the deck in half or one-fifth or however you

want, okay?

So, it's just a way to make sure the dealer is not cheating, he's giving the chance to

someone else to cut the deck as well.

Alright?

Now, the dealer has to deal the cards.

You can deal cards to distribute, basically.

Face up or face down, depending on the game.

Most card games are face down.

Face down means you can't see the card, okay?

So, you have to deal the cards face down.

So, I'm going to give you guys five cards.

One, two, three, four, five.

Do you remember what you have?

I gave them face down.

Some are face down, some are face up.

It's not important.

What you need to know is that I dealt the cards.

A dealer deals the cards, distributes the cards.

Face down, face up.

Face up, you can see what the card is.

Face down, you can't see what the card is.

Next, decide the direction of play or the turn order.

Now, which way are we going, right?

You have five people around a table, you're getting ready to play Uno or Texas Hold 'Em

Poker, whatever.

You need to decide, are we going this way or that way?

Are we going clockwise, clockwise, the direction of a clock, or are we going counterclockwise,

the opposite direction of a clock, okay?

Once you decide your turn order, if you're going clockwise or counterclockwise, you have

your cards, everyone's ready, let's play.

Now, once you start playing, you take turns.

To take turns is to, you know, whose turn is it?

Who is going to play next?

Is it your turn?

Is it your turn to play, your time to play a card?

So, you take turns, you play a card.

So, when you put a card down, if you're playing a game where you, you know, you reveal your

cards to the other people at the table, you play a card.

You can also use the term, use the phrasal verb to put down a card, all right?

I'm going to play the five of hearts, or I'm going to put down the eight, okay?

The eight of, we got spades here, yes, okay.

"Pick up" or "draw a card", so some card games, like Uno, you need to draw a card, or pick

up a card.

Usually there is a pile of cards, you know, a pile of cards called a draw pile, where

you draw a card from, or pick up a card from the draw pile, okay?

So, here, "pick up" or "draw a card", or "discard a card".

In some games, I don't like this card, I don't like, yeah, okay, I need new cards, okay,

I'm going to discard, throw away, not literally on the floor, but you're going to put the

card in another pile where the cards that are discarded go, often called the discard

pile.

If you play a game like Magic the Gathering with cards, that is usually the graveyard,

okay?

You can call it the graveyard or the discard pile.

All right, so what have we got?

We have shuffled our deck, we have gone over the rules, we have picked a dealer, we have

cut the deck, we've dealt the cards, we've decided we're going clockwise, we're taking

turns, we're playing cards, we're putting them down, we're discarding cards, we're having

a good time.

But now, let me go over a few more things with you, and we're going to do that in the

next room.

Come with me.

What's going on here?

Ah, we're talking about card rankings, so the order of cards, which card is more powerful

than the other card.

So, in a standard pack of cards, of playing cards, you usually have number cards, like

here we have a seven, an eight, and you have face cards.

So, you have your kings, you have your jacks, you have your queens, where are the queens?

There's a queen, and you have your aces.

Now, these are the face cards of a deck of cards.

Now, when you're talking about card ranking, depending on the game you are playing, some

cards, some face cards or number cards will be more powerful than other cards.

So, you might have someone say, "All right, in this game, it's ace high", right?

Nothing beats the ace.

You might have a trump card, trump cards are basically the most powerful cards that overrule

everything in a game of cards.

What was that high school game that we used to play where you have to choose a suit?

That is going to be the trump card, the trump suit.

Euchre, there was a card game called euchre, E-U-C-H-R-E.

You can look that up, and that one has trump cards, where, you know, a specific suit of

card will have, you know, superpowers, basically, all right?

You also have wild cards, so in a game of something like Uno, Uno has wild cards where

you can, like, change the game completely, and they do something weird to the rules of

the game, they are wild, all right?

Next in a standard deck of playing cards, you have the four suits, so you have spades,

not my best drawing of a spade, but I think you get it.

You have clubs, so these are the two black suits, spades and clubs.

You also have two red suits, you have hearts, and you have diamonds, right?

So, here we have, ta-da, the seven of clubs.

Next, let's do this one, aha, the nine of spades, and let's do some red cards, all right,

some red suits, the three of hearts, all right?

And let's do the five of diamonds, okay?

So, you can just say "the five" when it comes to the numbers.

We also have the face cards, like I mentioned, so you can have the queen of diamonds as well,

right?

Whew, that's a lot of stuff, a lot of information.

Hopefully not too much information, though, and if you'd like to test your understanding

of everything that I've done here, that we have reviewed in this video, as always, you

can check out the quiz on www.engvid.com.

After you do that, you can check out my YouTube channel, where you can subscribe, make sure

you click on the bell for the notifications, check me out on Facebook, check me out on

Twitter, and then have some fun playing card games with your family, with your friends.

Maybe go to the casino, if it's not against, you know, your beliefs or something.

I don't know why I mentioned that.

You can do whatever you want.

But anyway, I'm going to go play some cards.

My kids love Uno, at least one of them does.

The other one will learn when she's older.

Yeah, and let's do that.

So until next time, thanks for clicking, and let's see if I can do this trick, if I do...

Can I do this?

Yeah.

I think I'm going to just walk up the screen doing that.

Let's do that.

All right, bye guys.