We present the first formal mathematical presentation of the generalized Russian cards problem, and provide rigorous security definitions that capture both basic and extended versions of weak and perfect security notions. In the generalized Russian cards problem, three players, Alice, Bob, and Cathy, are dealt a deck of n cards, each given a, b, and c cards, respectively. The goal is for Alice and Bob to learn each other's hands via public communication, without Cathy learning the fate of any particular card. The basic idea is that Alice announces a set of possible hands she might hold, and Bob, using knowledge of his own hand, should be able to learn Alice's cards from this announcement, but Cathy should not. Using a combinatorial approach, we are able to give a nice characterization of informative strategies (i.e., strategies allowing Bob to learn Alice's hand), having optimal communication complexity, namely the set of possible hands Alice announces must be equivalent to a large set of t − (n, a, 1)-designs, where t = a − c. We also provide some interesting necessary conditions for certain types of deals to be simultaneously informative and secure. That is, for deals satisfying c = a − d for some d ≥ 2, where b ≥ d − 1 and the strategy is assumed to satisfy a strong version of security (namely perfect (d − 1)-security), we show that a = d + 1 and hence c = 1. We also give a precise characterization of informative and perfectly (d − 1)-secure deals of the form (d + 1, b, 1) satisfying b ≥ d − 1 involving d − (n, d + 1, 1)-designs. * D. Stinson's research is supported by NSERC discovery grant • We distinguish between deterministic strategies, in which the hand H A held by Alice uniquely determines the index i that she will broadcast, and non-deterministic, possibly even biased announcement strategies. We are especially interested in strategies with uniform probability distributions, which we will refer to as equitable.n−a+c c different announcements. However, there are a total of n−a+c c announcements, so every announcement must contain a block that contains X ′ .An optimal (3, 3, 1)-strategy would have m = 5. From Theorem 2.4, the existence of such a strategy would be equivalent to a large set of five STS(7). As mentioned above, it is known that this large set does not exist. However, from Example 1.1, we obtain a (3, 3, 1)-strategy for Alice with m = 6 that is informative for Bob. Thus we have proven the following.Theorem 2.5. The minimum m such that there exists a (3, 3, 1)-strategy for Alice that is informative for Bob is m = 6.