So I've finally got some code which shuffles a deck of cards and deals out an arbitrary number of hands. https://gist.github.com/19916435df2b116e0edc type DealerState = State [Card] [[Card]] deck :: [Card] deck = [ (s, r) | s <- suits, r <- ranks ] shuffleDeck :: Int -> RVar [Card] shuffleDeck n = shuffle $ concat $ replicate n deck deal :: Int -> ([[Card]] -> DealerState) deal n = \xs -> state $ \s -> (xs ++ [take n s], drop n s) -- |Deal a number of hands a number of cards each. dealHands :: Int -> Int -> ([[Card]] -> DealerState) dealHands hs cs = foldr1 (<=<) $ replicate hs (deal cs) First of all, I have no idea if this is any good. The way I end up calling dealHands and getting a "real" result is `runState (dealHands 3 7 []) deck`. And I see that I've got nested lambdas all in `deal`. But hey it took me forever to figure it out and it "works." I'm using `shuffle` from Data.Random.Extras, which results in an RVar, and thus the beginning of my perplexity. I'm happy to end up with RVar inside a State monad, but I'm not sure where to start. To be honest, I'm only barely understanding what I'm doing with the State monad as it is. :) Happy for any help whatsoever! - Matthew