dealer(6)
NAME
dealer - bridge hand generator
SYNOPSIS
dealer [-023ehuvmqV] [-p n] [-g n] [-s seed] [-l n] [inputfile]
DESCRIPTION AND EXAMPLE
The program dealer can be used to generate hands for partnerships
bidding training or for generating statistics that can be used to
design conventions, or win postmortems.
Running the program involves 3 steps. First, the user has to write an
input file containing hand-descriptions and action. A very simple
example would look something like:
condition shape(north, any 4333 + any 4423) and hcp(north)>=19
action printall
The first line specifies a condition for the north hand, in this case,
a hand with 4333 or 4432 shape and at least 19 high card points. The
second line tells the program to print the 4 hands. The program reads
from standard input, so in principle, it is possible to enter the
conditions directly into the program. Using a file is a lot more
practical though, as it allows the user to re-use conditions and fine-
tune the conditions.
Then the program has to be run, it reads the file, looks at the various
command line switches and then produces a number of hands. The output
appears on the screen but can be re-directed to a file.
Finally, the user has to look at output and analyze the produced hands.
Alternatively, the output can be used for a playing program.
OPTIONS
-e Exhaust mode (alpha version).
-g number
Maximum number of hands to generate (default is 1000000).
-l number
Instead of shuffling, deals are read from the file library.dat by
M. Ginsberg (see [1]). When using this, the tricks() function is
quite fast and bridge.exe from GIB is not used.
[1] ftp://ftp.cirl.uoregon.edu/pub/users/ginsberg/bridge/
-m Shows a progress meter.
-p number
Maximum number of hands to produce (default is 40).
-q Suppress PBN output (useful for testing, then switch it back on
when generating the "final" sample).
-s number
Uses number as the seed for the random generator, running the
program twice with the same seed will produce the same sequence of
hands.
-u Select uppercase for the symbols "AKQJT" (default is lowercase).
-v Toggle verbose output, prints statistics at the end of the run
(default is on).
-V Emit a version-identification string and exit.
-h Help, prints the syntax.
-0 No swapping, each deal is generated normally (shuffling) (default).
-2 2-way swapping, after each shuffle another deal is generated by
permuting E and W, leaving N and S in place (NB: not fully
compatible with predeal).
-3 3-way swapping, after each shuffle another 5 deals are generated by
permuting E, W, and S every which way, leaving N in place (NB: not
fully compatible with predeal).
BUGS
I would prefer if you did not use this program for generating hands for tournaments. I have not investigated the random number generation closely enough for me to be comfortable with that thought.
SEE ALSO
/usr/share/doc/dealer/Manual, dealer.dpp(6), deal(6).
AUTHORS
Hans van Staveren <[email protected]> Henk Uijterwaal <[email protected]> Manpage: Christoph Berg <[email protected]>
COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE
This program is hereby put in the public domain. Do with it whatever you want, but I would like you not to redistribute it in modified form without mentioning the fact of modification. I will accept bug reports and modification requests, without any obligation of course, but fixing bugs someone else put in is beyond me.
Opportunity
Personal Opportunity - Free software gives you access to billions of dollars of software at no cost. Use this software for your business, personal use or to develop a profitable skill. Access to source code provides access to a level of capabilities/information that companies protect though copyrights. Open source is a core component of the Internet and it is available to you. Leverage the billions of dollars in resources and capabilities to build a career, establish a business or change the world. The potential is endless for those who understand the opportunity.
Business Opportunity - Goldman Sachs, IBM and countless large corporations are leveraging open source to reduce costs, develop products and increase their bottom lines. Learn what these companies know about open source and how open source can give you the advantage.
Free Software
Free Software provides computer programs and capabilities at no cost but more importantly, it provides the freedom to run, edit, contribute to, and share the software. The importance of free software is a matter of access, not price. Software at no cost is a benefit but ownership rights to the software and source code is far more significant.
Free Office Software - The Libre Office suite provides top desktop productivity tools for free. This includes, a word processor, spreadsheet, presentation engine, drawing and flowcharting, database and math applications. Libre Office is available for Linux or Windows.
Free Books
The Free Books Library is a collection of thousands of the most popular public domain books in an online readable format. The collection includes great classical literature and more recent works where the U.S. copyright has expired. These books are yours to read and use without restrictions.
Source Code - Want to change a program or know how it works? Open Source provides the source code for its programs so that anyone can use, modify or learn how to write those programs themselves. Visit the GNU source code repositories to download the source.
Education
Study at Harvard, Stanford or MIT - Open edX provides free online courses from Harvard, MIT, Columbia, UC Berkeley and other top Universities. Hundreds of courses for almost all major subjects and course levels. Open edx also offers some paid courses and selected certifications.
Linux Manual Pages - A man or manual page is a form of software documentation found on Linux/Unix operating systems. Topics covered include computer programs (including library and system calls), formal standards and conventions, and even abstract concepts.
