With all the hand-ranking functions complete (see last week’s Lesson), the final version of my poker program restores the randomizer, draws and sorts a hand, then outputs the hand’s value. It’s quite disappointing.
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Matching two card values in a poker hand counts as a pair. It’s the lowest-ranking hand (above the non-ranked “high card”) and the most common. In my poker program, it’s also the last ranking hand tested.
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To effectively evaluate poker hands, the next sequence after a straight, straight flush, and flush draw (covered in last week’s Lesson) is to evaluate four-of-a-kind, then three-of-a-kind, and (while you’re at it) a full house.
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After pulling out any hands arranged in a straight pattern, covered in last week’s Lesson, the next logical test is for a flush. The flush draw is when all cards are of the same suit.
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The first test for a hand of five cards is the straight, specifically an Ace-high straight followed by a standard straight. To perform this test, I’ve concocted a special version of the program, one that has a set of pre-drawn poker hands.
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Last week’s Lesson brought the Poker program up to speed with regards to drawing a hand of 5 cards. The playing_card structure provides a convenient reference for each card, and the hand is sorted. Now comes the fun part: Determining the hand’s value.
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Improving upon last week’s Lesson, this update to the playing card simulator offers one minor change: Multiple cards are pulled from the draw() function.
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Drawing cards from a deck is an activity requiring more effort than flagging an element in an array, which was demonstrated in last week’s Lesson. Such code works, but it’s best to set details about the card when it’s drawn, noting its face value and suit, for example. Such complex information is best placed into a structure.
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To code a card game, you must start with the deck: 52 cards divided into 4 suits each consisting of 10 number cards and three face cards. Seems easy.
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I’ve wrapped up most of the oddities about structure/pointer/array notation in the past two Lessons (Part I and Part II). All that’s left is for me to go insane and start allocating structures as pointers with all their members as pointers.
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