On Two Plus Two poker hand evaluator, how do you get the best 5 cards combination out of the 7 that you passed to it?

Question

Is it possible to extract that info from the equivalence value?

I understand that the higher the equivalence value the better. Category and rank can also be extracte

Answer 1

The twoplustwo hand evaluator can evaluate five cards hands. Here's the code for that in C#:

int LookupFiveCardHand(int[] cards) {
    //assert cards size is 5
    int p = HR[53 + cards[i++]];
    p = HR[p + cards[i++]];
    p = HR[p + cards[i++]];
    p = HR[p + cards[i++]];
    p = HR[p + cards[i++]];
    return HR[p];
}

Notice there's 6 array look-ups despite there being 5 cards.

Anyways, since the evaluator is so fast, you can just compare every possible 5 card combination. A hand containing 7 card hands will have twenty-one 5 card combinations. Code in C#:

List GetBestFiveCards(List sevenCardHand) {
    List> fiveCardHandCombos = new List>();

    // adds all combinations of five cards to fiveCardHandCombos
    for (int i = 0; i < sevenCardHand.Count; i++) {
        for (int j = i+1; j < sevenCardHand.Count; j++) {
            List fiveCardCombo = new List(sevenCardHand);
            fiveCardHandCombos.RemoveAt(j); // j > i, so remove j first
            fiveCardHandCombos.RemoveAt(i);
            fiveCardHandCombos.Add(fiveCardCombo);
        }
    }

    Dictionary, int> comboToValue = new Dictionary, int>();
    for (int i = 0; i < fiveCardHandCombos.Count; i++) {
        comboToValue.Add(fiveCardHandCombos[i], LookupFiveCardHand(fiveCardHandCombos[i]));
    }
    int maxValue = comboToValue.Values.Max();
    return comboToValue.Where(x => x.Value == maxValue).Select(x => x.Key).First(); //grab only the first combo in the event there is a tie
}