Which is better?

Which of the following suit symbols do you prefer?

♠ ♥ ♦ ♣ or ♠ ♥ ♦ ♣ 

I’m currently doing some work on bridgeblogging.com and one aspect of that involves looking at the “Bridge Tools” that bloggers can use. So, I have a question and would love to hear your comments.

Bidding boxes (I’m not sure if it’s all of them), show the suit symbols with diamonds colored orange and clubs a shade of green. There are decks of bridge-sized playing cards that also have the symbols colored that way (i.e. spades black, hearts red, diamonds orange and clubs green). I seem to remember being told that in some countries (Europe?) they are used in the bridge clubs.

The idea behind this is to help people avoid getting the spades and clubs (both black), and hearts and diamonds (both red) mixed up, especially when sorting their hands. I don’t know, and probably won’t bother investigating, whether there is some advantage for some groups of people — perhaps people with poorer vision are helped by the color difference.

I don’t care for them very much, but that may be mainly lack of sufficient exposure (I have played with them, but I don’t remember where — maybe Turkey in 2004?). I imagine we would all get used to them if they ever become the norm.

I suspect that people either LOVE them or HATE them. I’m curious how you feel about them. Would it irritate you to see blog posts with orange-colored diamonds?