Card Dealing Math

Abstract

Various card tricks involve under-down dealing, where alternatively one card is placed under the deck and the next card is dealt. We study how the cards need to be prepared in the deck to be dealt in order. The order in which the $N$ cards are prepared defines a permutation. In this work, we analyze general dealing patterns, considering properties of the resulting permutations. We give recursive formulas for these permutations, their inverses, the final dealt card, and the dealing order of the first card. We discuss some particular examples of dealing patterns and conclude with an analysis of several existing and novel magic card tricks making use of dealing patterns. Our discussions involve 30 existing sequences in the OEIS, and we introduce 44 new sequences to that database.