The Deck

Thousand uses a 24-card stripped deck — a standard 52-card pack with all cards from 2 through 8 removed. Only the high cards remain.

Cards in the deck

Suit	Cards
♠ Spades	9, 10, J, Q, K, A
♣ Clubs	9, 10, J, Q, K, A
♦ Diamonds	9, 10, J, Q, K, A
♥ Hearts	9, 10, J, Q, K, A

That is 6 cards × 4 suits = 24 cards in total.

Why 24 cards?

The stripped deck is shared with several relatives in the Marriage family (Schnapsen, Sixty-Six, Bezique). It keeps every hand high-value and ensures that every card matters: in a 24-card game every card has either point value in tricks, marriage potential, or both.

Where to find a deck

Any standard playing-card deck works — simply remove cards 2 through 8 before play. Dedicated Преферанс (Preference) or Schnapsen decks ship as 24-card packs ready to use.

Optional accessories

• A score pad — Thousand scores are tracked as running totals to 1000, which is hard to do mentally. Printed score sheets with three columns are the most common form.
• A pencil — pen-and-paper scoring is universal; some tables use bidding chips to mark current bids during the auction.

See Card Ranking for the rank and point value of each individual card.