Algorithm to give a value to a 5 card Poker hand

Question

I am developing a poker game as college project and our current assignment is to write an algorithm to score a hand of 5 cards, so that the scores of two hands can be compar

Answer 1

The highest value for a card will be 14, assuming you let non-face cards keep their value (2..10), then J=11, QK, A=14.

The purpose of the scoring would be to differentiate between hands in a tie-breaking scenario. That is, "pair" vs. "pair." If you detect a different hand configuration ("two pair"), that puts the scores into separate groups.

You should carefully consult your requirements. I suspect that at least for some hands, the participating cards are more important than non-participating cards. For example, does a pair of 4's with a 7-high beat a pair of 3's with a queen-high? (Is 4,4,7,3,2 > 3,3,Q,6,5?) The answer to this should determine an ordering for the cards in the hand.

Given you have 5 cards, and the values are < 16, convert each card to a hexadecimal digit: 2..10,JQKA => 2..ABCDE. Put the cards in order, as determined above. For example, 4,4,7,3,2 will probably become 4,4,7,3,2. Map those values to hex, and then to an integer value: "0x44732" -> 0x44732.

Let your combo scores be multiples of 0x100000, to ensure that no card configuration can promote a hand into a higher class, then add them up.