NAME

Games::Poker::HandEvaluator - Evaluate poker hands

SYNOPSIS

   use Games::Poker::HandEvaluator qw(handval evaluate);
   use Games::Cards;
   my $Poker = new Games::Cards::Game;
   my $Deck = new Games::Cards::Deck ($Poker, "Deck");
   $Deck->shuffle;

   # Deal out the hands
   my $hand = Games::Cards::Hand->new($Poker, "Hand") ;
   $Deck->give_cards($hand, 7);

   print $hand->print("short"), "\n";
   # Hand:  JC   7C   8C   JH   3C   7S   5C  

   print handval(evaluate($hand)), "\n";
   # Flush (J 8 7 5 3)

Or just:

   my $hand_a = evaluate("Jc 7c 8c Jh 3c 7s 5c");
   my $hand_b = evaluate("9d 5d Ks 7h 5s 7s 4c");
   if ($hand_a > $hand_b) {
      print handval($hand_a), " beats ", handval($hand_b);
      # Flush (J 8 7 5 3) beats TwoPair (7 5 K)
   }
    

DESCRIPTION

This is an XS wrapper around the libpoker library, found at http://www.pokersource.org/.

It provides two functions, which are not exported by default, evaluate and handval. evaluate turns a hand, as described either by a Games::Card::CardSet object or a simple string, into an integer representing the best poker play for that hand. If the hand cannot be parsed, 0 is returned. This integer value can be compared with other hand evaluations; the higher the integer, the better the hand.

handval turns that value into a short textual description.

SEE ALSO

http://www.pokersource.org/

AUTHOR

Simon Cozens, <simon@kasei.com>

COPYRIGHT AND LICENSE

Copyright 2003 by Simon Cozens

This library is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.