A deal begins with a permutation
A fair card deal is a shuffle of all 52 distinct cards followed by slicing that order into hands. This page constructs four suits times thirteen ranks, uses the Fisher–Yates algorithm, then assigns consecutive cards to each player. No card can appear twice because each deck entry is moved, not redrawn. That distinction is essential: independently choosing five random cards can produce two queens of hearts, which cannot happen with one physical deck.
How Fisher–Yates works
For positions from the last card down to the second, Fisher–Yates selects one uniformly random earlier position and swaps the two entries. The final permutation has 52! possible orders, each with equal probability when the integer source is uniform. The browser uses rejection sampling around cryptographic random values where available, avoiding the tiny modulo bias produced by simply taking a random integer modulo the current length. The displayed hands are therefore reproducible only as a record, not as a seeded replay.
Worked deal
Set four players and five cards each. The tool may show Player 1: A♠ 7♦ K♥ 3♣ 10♠, then three more five-card hands. Twenty cards have been dealt and 32 remain undealt. The first player’s chance of receiving exactly one ace can be calculated with combinations, but the tool does not rank poker hands; it deals cards. For a bridge opening, select four players and thirteen cards. For a five-player game with ten cards each, two cards remain aside.
Capacity rule
Players multiplied by cards per player must not exceed 52. Six players receiving nine cards require 54 cards and therefore cannot be dealt from one standard deck. The page rejects that request rather than silently reusing cards. Jokers are excluded because many games use different joker rules; add them physically if the rules require them. The ranks A through K and suits spades, hearts, diamonds, clubs are all present exactly once.
Practical uses and mistakes
Use the tool to choose starting hands for a remote game, allocate cards for a teaching exercise, or verify that a proposed deal size is possible. Record the hands before starting; running the tool again is a complete new shuffle, not a continuation. A common mistake is to read the vertical bar between hands as a card separator: each “Player n:” label begins a hand. Another is to expect the undealt pile in the output; its count is shown, but its card order is intentionally not revealed.
How it differs
Random Card Draw returns a requested sample for one person. This page distributes a single deck among named positions and validates the total capacity. A card probability page would compute odds from known cards; this page creates the unknown starting state. It is for dealing, not for deciding a winner or simulating a casino game.
Checking the result before play
Count the cards in each displayed hand and confirm that the total equals players times cards per player. The hands are dealt in blocks, not round-robin order, but after a uniformly random shuffle both methods have the same distribution of final hands. If a game needs a burn card, dealer button, community cards, kitty, or trump reveal, remove those cards from the undealt portion according to its rules after recording the hands. The tool does not model marked cards or physical handling; it only produces a fair abstract deck order. For bridge, every player should have thirteen cards and no undealt pile. For Texas hold’em starting cards, use two cards per player, then determine board cards with a separate visible procedure. Never use a second run to “correct” an inconvenient hand: a redo is a new deal and should be agreed by all players.
Preserve the deal before revealing play
In a four-player, five-card example, the audit is simple: twenty distinct cards must appear across the four labels and thirty-two remain. If a player reconnects or a hand is mistyped, do not run a second shuffle to repair the record; identify the transcription error or agree that the deal is void. This tool supplies an abstract deck order, not betting, dealer rotation, hidden information, or game-specific rules after cards are dealt.