While it is usually quite simple to explain the ranking of cards based on their relative position within a sequence, for instance a nine of hearts is lower than a ten of hearts, some effort must be made to memorise the ranking of suits since this is usually very game dependant.
Take Euchre for instance, apart from having the Jack of trump as the highest ranked card, the Jack of the same colour as the Jack of trump, is also trump but one rank lower. This peculiarity when it comes to card rankings that also involve suits is by no means exclusive to Euchre; you also find it in other games.
In Seven-card Stud poker, suits are particularly important when determining who will place the first Bring-in bet when two or more players show the same ranked card. In Seven-card Stud, two possible ranking of suits exist, as we will now see. The first, from lowest to highest has Diamonds lowest, followed by Clubs, Hearts with Spades being highest. The second, from lowest to highest has Clubs, Diamonds, Hearts and Spades. Contract Bridge also uses this latter ranking. The easiest way to recall the latter sequence is to place the suits in ascending alphabetical order. I personally do not know of a way to memorize the former sequence, you just have to learn it. However, especially when playing a poker variation that utilises a peculiar ranking of suits, it is important to determine which ranking is in play before sitting down at a table.
Suits are significantly more important in trick-taking games. In these games, a specific suit is declared trump, or in other words that suit will prevail over the remaining suits. The manner in which the trump suit is declared may vary but the principle is usually the same. In “Spades” for instance, spades are always trump and players base their game plan around winning as many tricks aided by whatever spades and high cards they hold at the start of a hand. In “Hearts”, the opposite holds true, here the trump suit is undesirable and you want to get rid of any heart that comes your way. Each heart you win in a trick is one point scored against you, if then you have the misfortune of winning the queen of spades, well that is a further 13 points scored against you.
Earlier on, we mentioned Contract Bridge; in this game, the emphasis on determining a trump suit is even more significant, since any suit can become trump and players bid for which suit they would like to be trump. To complicate matters, the actual ranking of the suits themselves determines whether one bid is higher than another, as well as how many points a partnership will score if they fulfil their contract. In Bridge, the ranking of suits is identical to the second ranking of suits described for Seven-card Stud (clubs low, diamonds, hearts and spades high), but this ranking also utilises a fifth imaginary suit called No-trump (NT). In Bridge NT ranks highest and basically means that no suit will prevail over another, at least for that particular hand.
This importance attributed to particular suits, was not always a major part of trick-taking card games. In older tarot games, played with the 78-card deck for instance, the suits were never trump. Twenty-one unique trumps were in fact included in addition to the pip suits and no other suit was normally elevated to trump status. The Tarot deck also include four picture cards in each of the four suits and not three as in the more traditional 52-card decks; these are in order, Page (or Jack), Knight followed by Queen and King being highest. Obviously, a lower ranked trump would lose to a higher ranked trump, but that is just about it. In tarot games, the pip suits rake in few if any points, with the lion’s share of points scored by those players who successfully capture as many trump cards as they possibly can.
With the advent of the printing press, and mass-produced decks of cards, the larger decks proved less popular apart from being more expensive to produce, so the smaller 52-card decks enjoyed wider circulation among the general gambling public. Without the twenty-one distinct trumps, which were not included in these smaller decks, trick-taking card games needed other ways of determining trumps. This in my opinion was precisely the reasoning that led to the attribution of trump qualities to specific suits, and for the importance of attributing a ranking to the four suits.
In Italy for instance, were a 40-card deck sporting Latin pips (i.e. batons, coins, cups and swords) is still fairly popular, there are certain regional card games that still put an emphasis on one particular suit over the other. In the fishing game of Scopa for instance, the suit of coins (analogous to the modern suit of diamonds), is offered a higher value to the other suits. In fact, players who capture the most coins will score a point.
Going back to suit ranking and modern card games that are still played today, the ranking of suits differ from those described up to now. In Skat, the correct ranking of suits from lowest to highest is clubs, spades, hearts with diamonds highest. In Big Two the correct ranking from lowest to highest is spades, hearts, clubs with diamonds highest. For this reason, as mentioned earlier on, it is important to become familiar with whatever ranking is in use for a particular game.
Card games owe their diversity and allure to the ingenious game designers who through the ages have found new and exciting ways to use this most versatile and compact of social games. Ranking suits in a specific order adds an extra layer of complexity to a card game while making it more challenging and rewarding to master.