Depending on what you will define as an 'operation' there are some probably some easy numbers. I think the simplest answer is 52. You need to place each card c

Depending on what you will define as an 'operation' there are some probably some easy numbers. I think the simplest answer is 52. You need to place each card correctly once. Things get complicated if you account for searching in the deck, but we don't account for looking at the rubiks cube either. A more interesting question is 'what if we count how far we need to move the card' (i.e. moving it from position 1 to 52 is 52 steps, and from 1 to 3 is only 2 steps). This is a question of simple group theory though. Shuffling cards is the group S_52. The 'moving a card one position' is working with 51 simple operations of swap (idx, idx + 1). This is essentially bubble sort.