evaluating strength of a poker hand

[bnashenas1984]

Hi every one
I'm trying to make a little poker game but I don't know how to evaluate the strength of a 7 card hand..

It's not that hard with 5 cards. Actually I found some program to do that with 5 cards but the problem is that there is 5 flop cards and 2 cards that the player has in hand.

I don't even know how to start that .... (identify cards by numbers? 1 to 52) or (identify them by both numbers and suits)

Any suggestion will be helpful

Thanks

[kadghar]

Hi every one
I'm trying to make a little poker game but I don't know how to evaluate the strength of a 7 card hand..

It's not that hard with 5 cards. Actually I found some program to do that with 5 cards but the problem is that there is 5 flop cards and 2 cards that the player has in hand.

I don't even know how to start that .... (identify cards by numbers? 1 to 52) or (identify them by both numbers and suits)

Any suggestion will be helpful

Thanks

no, just think the hand is an array (7,2)

where the first dimension is the card, and the second dimension will be (1 the suit, 2 the number)
so if you want someone to have a poker of A's and other 3 cards, it'll look like:

arr(1,1) = 1 , arr(1,2) = 1
arr(2,1) = 2 , arr(2,2) = 1
arr(3,1) = 3 , arr(3,2) = 1
arr(4,1) = 4 , arr(4,2) = 1
arr(5,1) = any suit , arr(5,2) = any number
arr(6,1) = any suit , arr(6,2) = any number
arr(7,1) = any suit , arr(7,2) = any number

i think the algorithm to check them wont be short, but it seems doable using some FOR to sum and some SELECT CASE
give it a try.

HTH

[bnashenas1984]

Thanks for the reply
I realy need to get this program working as soon as possible.
I'll try to do it like you said.

Thanks again

[kadghar]

Thanks for the reply
I realy need to get this program working as soon as possible.
I'll try to do it like you said.

Thanks again

Good luck with that.

If you have any doubts while coding, we'll be glad to help you.

[bnashenas1984]

Hi again kadghar and thanks for the help
It's working now.. I haven't tested the speed yet but it's working fine. the only hand I'm having problem with is full house..
I'm working on it. I hope I can fix it.

Thanks again

[Killer42]

One method which would require a lot of initial setup but could work very fast is to define a seven-dimensional array. Assign a number to every one of the 52 cards. Then every element in the array would represent a possible hand, and would hold the score for that hand.

Hahaha... just realised, the downside is that I think there are a bit over a trillion (1,000,000,000, 000) possible hands. This might cause some minor difficulties related to (A) array size and (B) time required to populate it.

Well, I still think the idea was valid.

Hm... no wonder we don't see much multi-dimensional array usage.

[daniel aristidou]

Hahaha... just realised, the downside is that I think there are a bit over a trillion (1,000,000,000, 000) possible hands. This might cause some minor

Hehe Minor.......... ..... only a few huh?

[Killer42]

Hehe Minor.......... ..... only a few huh?

Sure. It's just a matter of throwing some huge quantities of money into RAM and processor power, and everything will be fine.

Plus, I suppose you might have to hire the population of India to enter the data.

[bnashenas1984]

Thanks for posts
Actually my program is working fine now.. But there is a pronlem
I put cards information in an array like "deck(x,y)"
the first dimension shows the number of card and the other one shows the suit.
then i check for the strength
But I'm having problem with the speed. It's now 15,000 hands per second which is not enough for me
I think I need a faster way to sort the array.. The way I sort it takes long time. Does any of you know how to sort a 2 dimensional array in a fast way?

Thanks

[kadghar]

Thanks for posts
Actually my program is working fine now.. But there is a pronlem
I put cards information in an array like "deck(x,y)"
the first dimension shows the number of card and the other one shows the suit.
then i check for the strength
But I'm having problem with the speed. It's now 15,000 hands per second which is not enough for me
I think I need a faster way to sort the array.. The way I sort it takes long time. Does any of you know how to sort a 2 dimensional array in a fast way?

Thanks

do you mean sort, like with bubble sort, sorting the first dimension first and then the seccond?,

why dont you use something like (to sort a one dimension array):

arr1(1 to n) 'where n is the number of hands, and the array values are from 1 to 230, where 1 is a pair of two, and 230 a royal straight flush

so lets say your first hand was a pair of 5, so arr1(1) = 4, and your seccond hand was a royal straight flush, so arr1(2) = 230.

Here you can use a bubble sort, or a cocktail sort or any Sorting Algorithm. I'd say that once you have arr1, you will be able to sort more than 15,000 hands in a seccond.
Now, i bet the method that will fill this array, measuring the strength of the hands, is quite slower. May be you want to work with that.