The format of a deal

The simplest deal is a single number. For example, 5 means "deal 5 cards" and 10 means "deal 10 cards". The deal 5^2 means "deal 5 cards twice", so is equivalent to 10, and 5^2-4 means "deal 5 cards twice, three times or four times". To deal some cards an unspecified number of times just use a question mark instead of a number: 5^? means "deal 5 cards as many times as you like" and 5^1-? means "deal 5 cards at least once".

To repeat a more complicated deal, such as 1^?, first enclose the deal in round brackets. For example, (1^?)^2 means "deal as many cards as you like, twice". Since 1^? is an extremely useful deal, any number of consecutive dots is interpreted as (1^?), and therefore the previous example could also be written as ...^2.

Deals can be chained together by writing them one after the other. For example, 5 10 1 means "deal 5 cards, then deal 10 cards, then deal 1 card", i.e., "deal 16 cards". The spaces are necessary in this case because otherwise the deal would mean "deal 5101 cards", but sometimes you can get away without spaces: ...1... means "deal as many cards as you like, then deal 1 card, then deal as many cards as you like again". If one of the deals in your chain is more complicated than the deals described above, you will need to enclose it in round brackets.

Finally, the keyword 'or' turns chains of deals into different possibilities within the same deal. For example, 1... or 2 means "deal 1 card then deal as many cards as you like, or just deal 2 cards". Perhaps surprisingly, 5 or 5 doesn't simply mean "deal 5 cards". Rather, it means "deal 5 cards to a person or deal 5 cards to a different person", or in other words, "deal 5 cards to one of 2 people". A simpler way to specify that a chain of deals should be directed at one of m ≥ 0 people is to put an asterisk between m and the chain: 2 * 5 is equivalent to 5 or 5.