High card by suit

High card by suit and low card by suit refer to assigning relative values to playing cards of equal rank based on their suit. When suit ranking is applied, the most common conventions from lowest to highest are:

♣♦♥♠ English alphabetical order

clubs, followed by diamonds, hearts, and spades.

This ranking is used in the game of bridge.

♦♣♥♠ Alternating colors

Diamonds, followed by clubs, hearts, and spades. Similar to alphabetical ranking in that the two highest rankings are occupied by the same two suits (hearts and spades) in the same relative position to one another, but differing in the two lowest rankings, which while occupied by the same two suits (clubs and diamonds) have their relative position to one another swapped.

This ranking is sometimes used in the Chinese card game Big Two.

♠♣♦♥ High reds

Some Russian card games like Preference, 1000 etc. use the following order: spades, clubs, diamonds and hearts.

500 also uses this ordering.

♦♥♠♣ Low reds

Some German card games like Skat use the following order: diamonds, hearts, spades and clubs.

♣♥♦♠ Chinese-Japanese-Korean conventional order

clubs, followed by hearts, diamonds, and spades.

This ranking is commonly used in China, Japan, and South Korea, in their variants of Poker games.