An Italian Joker card

The Joker is a playing card found in most modern French-suited card decks, as an addition to ♣ the standard four suits (Clubs, Diamonds, Hearts, and Spades). Since the second half of the 20th century, they have also ♣ been found in Spanish- and Italian-suited decks, excluding stripped decks.

The Joker originated in the United States during the Civil War, ♣ and was created as a trump card for the game of Euchre. It has since been adopted into many other ♣ card games, where it often acts as a wild card, but may have other functions such as the top trump, ♣ a skip card (forcing another player to miss a turn), the lowest-ranking card, the highest-value card, or a card of ♣ a different value from the rest of the pack (see e.g. Zwicker which has six Jokers with this function).

By contrast, ♣ a wild card is any card that may be used to represent another card or cards – it need not ♣ be a Joker.

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