poker card game revisited (code included)

[John Hazen]

[Erik Max Francis]
> > > Searching for straights and flushes is much better done by masks.

Interesting.  I've been thinking about playing with this stuff too, but
hadn't considered masks.  So each card has a representation:

n bits for rank, then m bits for suit.

00000000000010 0001 = 2 clubs
01000000000000 1000 = K spades
...

[flupke]
> > As for straights, if i understand correctly, you make all possible 
> > straights of the cards in the hand and then see if one matches?

Yeah, I originally thought that's what you meant, too.  But if you take
the scheme above, and sort the cards before you merge them into the
hand-bits aggregate, then you can just have *one* mask for straights,
and shift it down by a bit each time you check. So the best straight
mask (A high) would be (ignoring suit bits):

10000000000000 01000000000000 00100000000000 00010000000000 00001000000000

Then this could be shifted right for a K-high straight:

01000000000000 00100000000000 00010000000000 00001000000000 00000100000000

I guess that means that an Ace has to have the following representation,
since it can be both at the high and low end of a straight:

10000000000001 0100 = A hearts

But this may mess with bit-counting shortcuts for other calculations...

This is interesting to think about.  Thanks for the pointer.  I'm also
going to look at pokersource, though I may put that off until I at least
partially re-invent the wheel for learning purposes.

-John