Write a JavaScript Program to Shuffle Deck of Cards

In this article, we’ll be discussing how to shuffle a deck of cards using JavaScript.

Shuffling a deck of cards means randomly rearranging the order of cards in the deck.

This is a common operation in card games, and JavaScript provides a simple way to implement it.

To shuffle a deck of cards, we first need to create the deck.

A standard deck of cards has 52 cards, divided into four suits: hearts, diamonds, clubs, and spades.

Each suit has 13 cards, ranging from 2 to 10, and including the face cards: Jack, Queen, King, and Ace.

We can represent a card as an object with two properties: suit and value. For example, the Ace of Spades would be represented as { suit: ‘spades’, value: ‘A’ }.

We can create the deck by looping over the suits and values and creating a card object for each combination.

const suits = ['hearts', 'diamonds', 'clubs', 'spades'];
const values = ['2', '3', '4', '5', '6', '7', '8', '9', '10', 'J', 'Q', 'K', 'A'];

const deck = [];

for (let suit of suits) {
for (let value of values) {
deck.push({ suit, value });
}
}

Now that we have the deck, we can shuffle it.

There are many ways to shuffle a deck of cards, but one of the simplest is the Fisher-Yates shuffle algorithm.

This algorithm works by iterating over the deck from the last card to the first, and swapping each card with a random card before it.

for (let i = deck.length - 1; i > 0; i--) {
const j = Math.floor(Math.random() * (i + 1));
[deck[i], deck[j]] = [deck[j], deck[i]];
}

After the loop completes, the deck will be shuffled. We can now use the deck for our card game.

Here’s the complete code:

const suits = ['hearts', 'diamonds', 'clubs', 'spades'];
const values = ['2', '3', '4', '5', '6', '7', '8', '9', '10', 'J', 'Q', 'K', 'A'];

const deck = [];

for (let suit of suits) {
for (let value of values) {
deck.push({ suit, value });
}
}

for (let i = deck.length - 1; i > 0; i--) {
const j = Math.floor(Math.random() * (i + 1));
[deck[i], deck[j]] = [deck[j], deck[i]];
}

console.log(deck);

In this tutorial, we discussed how to shuffle a deck of cards using JavaScript.

We created a deck of cards and then used the Fisher-Yates shuffle algorithm to randomly rearrange the order of cards in the deck.

This is a simple and effective way to shuffle a deck of cards, and it can be easily adapted for use in various card games.