Alternative Card Suit emojis

[Crissov]

Traditionally, the French card deck uses only two colors for its four suits: red (diamonds and hearts) and black (clubs and spades). For usability and accessibility, there are, however, card decks with four different colors, one for each suit. Alas, people do not agree about the correct palette.

Card games differ in which order they rank suits, if at all. Unicode code points are ordered in the original English order usually found, e.g., in Bridge spades, heart, diamonds and clubs, but the emoji code points are actually in the now dominant Poker order: spades, clubs, hearts, diamonds and there are other collations.

Game	Order	Colors
Poker	♠♣♥♦
Bridge	♠♥♦♣	or
Preferans, 500, 13	♥♦♣♠
99, Teen patti	♣♥♠♦
Skat	♣♠♥♦
Big 2	♠♥♣♦ or ♥♦♠♣

Historically and locally, the suits have alternate representations and since they are sometimes related to "the" four elements, they are connected to other esoteric, astrological and mystic concepts.

Suits	Element	Rank	Compass	Zodiac	Colors
♣ Clubs = Clovers = Acorns = Batons	Fire ☲	King ♚	South	♈♌♐
♦ Diamonds = Tiles = Bells = Coins = Pentacles = Rings = Crescents	Earth ☷	Jack ♗	North	♉♍♑	Gold
♠ Spades = Pikes = Wands = Staves = Leaves = Grass = Shields = Swords	Air ☴	Knight ♞	East	♊♎♒	Green
♥ Hearts = Roses = Cups	Water ☵	Queen ♕	West	♋♏♓	Red

Suits	🇫🇷	🇩🇪	🇨🇭	🇮🇹	🇪🇸	Tarot
♣ Clubs
♦ Diamonds
♠ Spades
♥ Hearts

Anyway, since all four filled Black Unicode emoji suits also have a hollow White non-emoji counterpart, these could be used for a different set of colors. Their code points are actually mixed with each other: U+2660–7 = ♠♡♢♣♤♥♦♧. ♡♢♤♧

The (former) Japanese telecom providers Disney Mobile, KDDI au and Emobile were using , but Softbank and Docomo / Willcom only used classic red and black.

[Crissov]

Corollary

There probably should be Unicode characters for non-French suits, which could also become emojis:

• ♠️
  • 🍂 🍁 🍃 Leaf
  • 🛡 Shield
  • ⚔️ 🗡 Sword / Wand #160 / Staff / Pike / Stave
• ♣️
  • 🌰 Acorn (#54)
  • 🔨 🏏 🏑 🏒 🎾 🏸 Baton (#67) / Club
  • 🍀 ☘️ Clover
• ♥️
  • 🏵 🌹 🌼 🌷 🌻 🌸 🌺 💐 🥀 Rose (flower, blossom)
  • 🏆 ☕️ 🍺 🍷 🍸 🍹 🥃 Cup
• ♦️
  • 🏅 🎖 💰 💸 💵 💴 💶 💷 Coin #137
  • 💎 Diamond
  • 💍 Ring
  • 🔔 🛎 🎐 Bell
  • 🌛 🌜 🌙 🌘 🌒 🌗 🌓 🌖 🌔 🌕 🌝 🌑 🌚 🎑 Crescent

In conclusion, Pike/Spear, Acorn, Baton/Club, Jingle Bells and Coin emojis are needed most direly. Other suits would require alternate emoji glyphs that deviate from current vendor agreements.

[Crissov]

Mockups

Twemoji

Suit	1	2	3	original
Spades U+2660
Clubs U+2663
Hearts U+2665
Diamonds U+2666

Emojitwo

Suit	1	2	3	original
Spades U+2660
Clubs U+2663
Hearts U+2665
Diamonds U+2666

[Porges]

Another suit system is that used for the (fortune-telling version of the) tarot deck, which is usually a version of the Spanish suits: something like wands/batons, coins/pentacles, cups, and swords. There should also be a way to combine a suit symbol with an existing playing card so you can form non-French-suited tarot (and standard playing cards).

[Porges]

Swiss decks for Jass have 10 as a 'banner' and Ace as a card with 2 elements on it. (Maybe if additional suits are supported by regional indicators then these could just be variations on the existing characters, + ZWJ + 🇨🇭.)

[kbjr]

Haven't seen any activity here in a while, wanted to see if this is something anyone is looking at or working on in any way. I'm currently working on a refresh of an old library of mine for working with decks of cards, and it has support for returning the unicode character corresponding to a particular rank or card, but there are some very clear gaps in what has unicode representation.

So I'm just interested in what if any work is being done in the area.

[Crissov]

Nobody is currently actively working on this as far as I know.