playing with a full deck
All marbles present
Playing with a full deck means having all one's mental faculties intact—being rational, competent, and of sound mind.
The phrase comes from card games, where a complete deck is necessary for fair play.
It appears almost exclusively in the negative: He's not playing with a full deck suggests someone is mentally deficient, eccentric, or crazy.
- all thereMentally competent, aware
- all the marblesTotal stakes in competition
- sharp as a tackExtremely intelligent and alert
- sanityMental soundness
- sound mindMental clarity and stability
firing on all cylinders · intelligence · clear-headed · rationality · discernment · evaluation · lucidity · in one's right mind · right mind · logic · compos mentis · cognition · mental faculties · clarity · reasoning · coherence · on the ball · bright-eyed and bushy-tailed
playing with a full decknot all there
Mentally deficient somehow
crazy · insane · out of one's mind · off one's rocker · lost one's marbles
playing, played, player, players, playful, playfully, playfulness, replay, replayed