Joker 80T Prototype

Also known as the demo deck, this is an early prototype of a 2015 Kickstarter campaign which was cancelled, which was a relaunch of an earlier campaign which failed to fund (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/russellcommon/texas-playing-cards-where-pocket-kks-are-really-ki). Produced by Russell Common of Texas Playing Cards (texasplayingcards.com) this deck had 101 decks printed by MPC for this prototype purpose on 310 GSM Casino stock. Some custom artwork, including the 4 jokers was done by artist Vivian Friedel (http://haggardhare.com). It is a variation of a standard poker deck that creates a 64 card deck by adding a Joker for each suit, plus adds an additional pair of court cards for each suit called the Cavaliers and Bishops which fit between the 10 (aka Tower in this deck) and Queen, in that order (T, J, C, B, Q, K). In terms of game play, the Jack is worth 11, Cavalier 12, Bishop 13 and Queen/King move to 14/15. The deck also places the card rank index inside the suit. The Bishops in the deck were inspired from past popes of the Catholic church. The tuck itself is styled after a famous cigaratte box, complete with related warnings. While the back design is meant to be a visual illusion of sorts. These additional cards mean it presents additional variations for existing games, opportunities to create entirely new games, or just adds new cards and elements to existing games without modifying the rules much other than introducing new cards with new ranks. In fact, one of the motiviations behind designing this deck was to include new options and rules for Texas Holdem. A few other games that work with modified rules include other Poker games, BlackJack, Spades, Solitaire or most other standard card games. Some commercial games that could be played with this deck by taking advantage of the extra cards include Canasta, Rook, Tichu and Wizard Note - An earlier printing during early development was also created from MPC in a 7 deck order and printing which featured earlier design elements including a cat skull on AoS and much wider borders on face cards.