Designed by Wanye Cooley to fix the issue of needing multiple playing cards decks to play poker, pinochle, rook, and tarok. This deck includes mapping so that you can use it to play either of those games as well as the games in the rulebook.
Rulebook include rules for several trick taking games using this custom 54-card deck with a "revolutionary" alphabetic design. Similar to "Wizard" and other trick-taking games you must guess the number of tricks you will take each round, but the total number guessed cannot equal the hand-size for the round (forcing at least one player to lose each round).
Hand size starts at 8 then decreases by 1 each round until it is only 1 card, then it increases (1 card each round) back to 8.
The deck includes rules for three games:
UG I-is the standard 2–6 player trick-taking game
UG II—is played in partnerships
UG III—is a solitaire variant of the game
From the rule book:
In the future, the metric system will be adopted worldwide. The Universal Deck is the first to adopt a truly metric size, 6 x 9 cm. This makes the cards 1/8" narrower than a poker deck, 1/8" wider than a bridge deck, and 1/16" longer than both.