A SHOE! In a card game... ??

**OneStiffRod** · 02-18-2003

This is eluding me and I don't know why, here's what I want to do...

I have this Baccarat simulater I'm trying to make - baccarat is very similar to blackjack so u can think of it that way if u wish.

I want to have my program shuffle decks of cards into shoes - for those that don't know - a SHOE in a casino is usually 6-8 full decks (52 cards ea.) that are randomly shuffled together and all cards are dealt outta that shoe. I want the user to be able to select the number of decks within the SHOE from 1 to max 8. -- I will also add an infinite shoe which is basically nothing more than a seeded rand() that determines the values of the cards drawn--.

PROBLEM:
I just can't get my hed around the design - I don't need help coding but attacking this problem. I was thinking...

1) using an array or enum to hold an index of the 52 cards in a deck. Or similarly, hold the suits/faces of the cards.
2) I need another array or vector to hold the actual cards - IE this is the SHOE
3) #PROBLEM# How do I shuffle this randomly efficiently, remember I can't use the same card twice (if I give each card an index value) or I can't use more than a certain number of Aces, Kings ( if I design to keep track of suits/faces)... If I use a rand() function how can I create it so that it says that since the value 57 has just been used it can't be used again this shuffle?

How do I avoid getting junk values from my rand() function is the basic jist of my question - I don't want to throw out generated values from rand() b/c it's already been used...

Pleeze help me understand how to acheive this ---

Thanx.

**abrege** · 02-18-2003

Perhaps shove the the numbers which are already used into an array, and then use a do...while loop that breaks only when the generated number is not equal to any number in the array?

**Monster** · 02-18-2003

A small example generating 52 (different) random numbers (sorry it's in C). If you want 2 decks you can change the NOFDECKS define.

Code:

#include <stdio.h>
#include <time.h>

#define NOFDECKS 1

int main()
{
   int i;
   int r;
   int cards[52] = {0};

   srand(time(NULL));

   for(i = 0; i < NOFDECKS * 52; i++)
   {
      r = rand() % 52;
      while(cards[r] >= NOFDECKS)
         r = (r + 1) % 52;

      printf("%d ", r+1);
      cards[r]++;
   }
   return 0;
}

**xds4lx** · 02-18-2003

Look at the stl algorigthms, specifically std::random_shuffle

**zMan** · 02-18-2003

a simple shuffle could look like this

Code:


for( int i = 0; i < CARDS_IN_SHOE; i++)
{
      iRand = rand()%CARDS_IN_SHOE;

      //Swap cards
      temp = cards[i];
      cards[i] = cards[iRand];
      cards[iRand] = temp;
}


....where cards is the actual shoe of cards...an array of int's in this case

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