cards and permutations

[thoandros]

Hello
I am trying to find a quick way to pull down a list of all possible combinations with a macro but I got stuck.

I have a deck of 18 cards:
5 clubs (2 to 6)
5 diamonds (2 to 6)
8 spades (2 to 9)

the dealer takes out 3 of them chosing one per suit for him and keep them covered.


The remaining 15 cards are shuffled distributed randomly to 5 players, each one with 3 boxes on the table (the players can also have 3 cards of the same suit! it's only the dealer that has one for each suit).

Of these 15 cards, 8 cards are randomly chosen to stay face up and 7 are face down.

Now, given that I know which ones are the 10 cards I don't see (the 3 of the dealer, which I know are 1 per suit and the 7 face down) I first need (a macro?) to identify the possible combinations the dealer can have (number may vary but it should not exceed 100/120 roughly)

Once I have identified the 3 cards the dealer might have, I will can easily find out which are remaining 7 cards.

Now, I know that with 7 cards I have 5,040 permutations possible. Well that is what I need, multiplied by the number of dealer combinations...

So the macro should put in column A the combination name (can concatenate the 3 dealer card codes?) and for each of the rows, columns B to I the card value (example: 3C, 2D, 9S, 7S, 4D, 2C, 8S, 3S) and so on.

I hope I have given all the needed information.

And really hope some gentlemen can send me the code

thank you in advance

[thoandros]

In the meantime I have found a way to generate the 5040 permutations of the string abcdefg
I will create now a macro that substitues the letters with the cards.
So I am ok thanks