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So, normally you have two jokers, a big joker and a little joker. The big one is sometimes distinguished by being red (or colored). How does it work with decks with 4 or more jokers? Is is supposed to alternate black, red, black, red, or is only one supposed to be red, or should the red thing just be avoided with > 2 jokers and some other scheme used to identify their rank?

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Ok, I just had a look around... you guys do use this site for regular old playing cards too, right? – GGG Feb 10 '12 at 4:57
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@Autohpil Yes. It's not all Magic questions, we swear. :) – Alex P Feb 10 '12 at 4:58
Hahah I was tempted to tag it with that, had to look around for rules – GGG Feb 10 '12 at 5:00

3 Answers

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The one 4-joker commercial deck I've seen used 2 black and 2 red.

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Thanks, this is helpful. Do you remember if there was any way to tell which pair of red-black jokers outranked the other? – GGG Feb 11 '12 at 3:23
Hmm actually I guess red should always outrank black since it's like a trump suit. I'm still not sure how I should distinguish their rank though. – GGG Feb 11 '12 at 3:29
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One of the two blacks was the trademark. The reds were identical. – aramis Feb 11 '12 at 5:44
Good enough for me. I'm going to alternate black/red and put little dots under the center of the card to represent their rank, no dots for the lowest, the most dots for the highest, unless anyone has a better suggestion. That should be pretty scalable. – GGG Feb 11 '12 at 9:43
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Jokers aren't normally differentiated by rank in the games I've seen where jokers are used. – aramis Feb 11 '12 at 20:33
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up vote 2 down vote

The Maverick brand of playing cards (U.S. Playing Card Co.) is one example that sometimes has 2 jokers that simply say, "Maverick" on them and two that show the logo. Each design is in red on one and blue on the other.

To the best of my knowledge, there's no standard for ranking jokers.

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Thanks, this is very helpful. I am trying to conceptualize jokers in a way that resolves them with the other cards and this is consistent with suits and rank... in this case two "ranks" of jokers in each "suit" for a total of four cards. – GGG Feb 26 '12 at 6:46
Welcome to the site! – Pat Ludwig♦ Feb 28 '12 at 7:46
up vote 1 down vote

There is no common convention for 4 Jokers.

According to Wikipedia

There are usually two Jokers per deck, often noticeably different. For instance, Bicycle Playing Cards prints their company's guarantee claim on only one. More common traits are the appearance of colored and black/non-colored Jokers.

and other websites, there are normally only two jokers. The qualities of which, including appearance were probably borrowed from the Tarrot trump cards the Magacian/Juggler and (which is red in color, and outranks) the Fool (which is black in color), both of which have the apperance of a court jester.

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I had a deck of cheap playing cards I bought at the dollar store that had four jokers. I don't remember what they looked like now, though. – GGG Feb 11 '12 at 3:22

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