figuring out a 5 card hand

[stevf]

Hello all, got an assignment in my C++ class to deal a 5 card hand and determine it the hand is a pair, 3 of a kind, flush, etc. I have been thinking about it and with sorting the hand I can write a bunch of if statements with multiple && and || to figure this out but that is a lot of code.

Does anyone have any thoughts or tips on a more elegant solution other than this mass of if statements? I dont want code or anything like that, just a nudge in the right direction


Thanks

 

[lousydood]

Bucket-sorting by rank will make it pretty easy to test those properties.

For example, detecting a pair is simple this way: only 4 buckets will be filled, one bucket with 2 cards.

 

[stevf]

thanks - I will look into that - that sounds much better than the ifs and all the and/ors required for pairs

 

[Drakkon]

http://forum.java.sun.com/thre...2324&start=15&tstart=0 = great java thread on the subject. I've been playing around porting it to flash.

 

[stevf]

Thanks - that looks interesting, will have to study it closer the next couple of days

 

[txrandom]

This may help for finding a straight or straight flush:

Assign numeric values to cards, I'm guessing you're already doing that. Sort them. Repeat this four times increasing i, array['i'] - array[i+1] = 1. If true continue, else it's not a straight.

Then use the bucket for storing my suit. If one bucket has 5 cards, it's a straight flush. There may be an easier way, but this should work without too much "brute"
forcing.

'i' = i . It was making my post italicized.

 

[tfinch2]

Originally posted by: Drakkon
http://forum.java.sun.com/thre...2324&start=15&tstart=0 = great java thread on the subject. I've been playing around porting it to flash.

http://pics.bbzzdd.com/users/D...dKitsune/excellent.jpg

 

[flashbacck]

.

 

[stevf]

Thanks all - that was just the push I needed. The bucket sort worked well and made pair, 2 pair, 3 of a kind, full house, and 4 of a kind a breeze.

Straight wasnt too bad using a small loop to check if 5 were adjacent. did add an extra check for the Ace since it can fill two different straights

I was given the basics of a card program that just shuffled then dealt all the cards into two hands and with the way it was written, it was easy to seperate the suits and then that was easy at that point to check for the flush.

The best part was seeing all the different sorting algorithms out there as I was researching this.

Thanks again