pip

Pips are small but easily countable items, such as the dots on dominoes and dice, or the symbols on a playing card that denote its suit and value. Playing cards In playing cards, pips are small symbols on the front side of the cards that determine the suit of the card and its rank. For example, a standard 52-card deck consists of four suits of thirteen cards each: spades, hearts, clubs, and diamonds. Each suit contains three face cards – the jack, queen, and king. The remaining ten cards are called pip cards and are numbered from one to ten. (The "one" is almost always changed to "ace" and often is the highest card in many games, followed by the face cards.) Each pip card consists of an encoding in the top left-hand corner (and, because the card is also inverted upon itself, the lower right-hand corner) which tells the card-holder the value of the card. In Europe, it is more common to have corner indices on all four corners which lets left-handed players fan their cards more comfortably. The center of the card contains pips representing the suit. The number of pips corresponds with the number of the card, and the arrangement of the pips is generally the same from deck to deck. Pip cards are also known as numerals or numeral cards.