Pokerware is an offline secure passphrase generator that operates just like Diceware except that it uses a deck of playing cards instead of dice. In some situations a deck may be more readily available than dice. Pokerware draws from 5,304 words, in contrast to Diceware's 7,776 words.
See: Introducing the Pokerware Secure Passphrase Generator
- Formal word list:
- Slang word list:
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Thoroughly shuffle the deck. Six or seven riffle shuffles should be sufficient.
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Draw two cards. Sort them by value, then suit. Suits are in alphabetical order: Clubs, Diamonds, Hearts, Spades.
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Draw additional cards until you get a card that doesn't match the face value of either of your initial two cards. Observe its suit.
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Using your two cards and observed suit, look up a word in the table.
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Place all cards back in the deck, shuffle a few times, and repeat from step 2 until you have the desired number of words. Each word is worth 12.4 bits.
For example, suppose in step 2 you draw King of Spades (KS, K♠) and Queen of Clubs (QC, Q♣). In step 3 you first draw King of Diamonds (KD, K♦), discarding it because it matches the face value of one of your cards from step 2. Next you draw Four of Spades (4S, 4♠), taking spades as your extra suit. In order, this gives you Queen of Clubs, King of Spades, and Spades: QCKSS or Q♣K♠♠. This corresponds to "wolves" in the formal word list.
Choose a word list (formal, slang) and listing type (ascii, unicode) and run it with make.
$ make LIST=slang TYPE=unicode pdf
Which will produce pokerware.pdf with the selected configuration.