It's always struck me as a little strange that you can watch the deck devolve. Correct me if I'm, wrong - pinochle uses a double-deck from the nine up; bezique starts with the eight, or sometimes the seven; piquet goes up from the six. Other principles of play are basically similar - sets, runs, tricks, trumps, and variations.
If you're going to have a smaller pack of cards, why cut out the bottom numbers? Why not use one-two plus the face cards, one-two-three plus the face cards, one-two-three-four plus etc.? I'm assuming the face cards came from tarot and are a given. It seems a bit strange to start with a "full" deck and extract cards from it to play.
And of course, is my chronology all mixed up? Even so, isn't it strange to have be added eights, sevens, and sixes, and finally fives and fours and threes and twos, old designations rather than new ones? Why have started at ten to begin with?
