Finding a 'straight' in poker.

Esbo is banned. Permanent I believe.

At least, and unintentionally though, he posted a nice recreational challenge and I learnt a lot from it, should I need to write a poker game some time.

Ya, the code can be studied but I don't think there's any big need for suggestions to esbo, seeing as he/she/it is now banned and cannot see what suggestions are posted.

I suspect he can come back with a different login id if he is really deliberate!
But I will miss him a lot.

I sure will not. And I'm sure that if esbo comes back, we'll spot him/her/it immediately. There's a reason for the permanent ban.

Thanks Elysia. You're a programming master! How the hell do you know every thing?

And how exactly will you stop him from coming back? I think if he changes his ways (that will be good anyway)
then probably we can not spot him so easily!

I think if he changes his ways (that will be good anyway)
then probably we can not spot him so easily!

If he does change his ways, there would be no reason to ban him again.

His ban is temporary, though it may be made permanent.

Originally Posted by manav

And how exactly will you stop him from coming back? I think if he changes his ways (that will be good anyway)
then probably we can not spot him so easily!

I can't stop esbo from coming back.
And if esbo comes back as someone else, then that's a good thing. Though we may not spot esbo, if esbo changes his/her/its ways, then everyone will be happy again.
But if we find someone who tells everyone to make all variables global, then...

Originally Posted by Elysia

But if we find someone who tells everyone to make all variables global, then...

Ha! Ha! Ha!

But I really miss him

I hardly knew him ... and yet I weep.
I don't know where the global variable issues stem from.
Perhaps he wasn't given enough space as a child, constantly blocked in,
having the feeling that he only existed during breast_feeding(double d).
If only daddy wasn't void drunk() const!

Ha! Ha! I am back!
Not too sure what happened, I guess they didn't like some of my posts, must be more careful in future

Originally Posted by Elysia

Ya, the code can be studied but I don't think there's any big need for suggestions to esbo, seeing as he/she/it is now banned and cannot see what suggestions are posted.

You don't really believe I that I could not see the messages do you?

Originally Posted by oogabooga

In a previous post I gave the probability for a pair in 3 cards,
but that's just the flop. As shown below, for all 5 community cards
the odds are basically 50/50, so that's why you see so many pairs
on the table!

Code:

Number of possible 5-card combinations:
  n = 52 * 51 * 50 * 49 * 48 = 311875200
Number of possible 5-card combinations _without_ a pair:
  m = 52 * 48 * 44 * 40 * 36 = 158146560
Probability of 5-card combination not having a pair:
  m / n     = 0.5051
So probability of 5-card combination having a pair:
  1 - m / n = 0.4929

I guess if you wanted a really difficult challange you could calculate the probability of a
hand winning pre-flop. There is a program called pokerstove which does it, I am not sure
how, I think it just runs loads of simulations or something like that.
But I guess you could also work it out mathematically, it might do that too for some hands,
except perhaps where one hand is a random hand which woud be harder.

I gues for example if you had Ah Jc aginst say 4c9d you could work it out.
First you might work out all the hands where nothing is paired for example in which case the first hand would win, but you would have to exclude straights and flushes, then go on to consider pairs, sets, full house etc......
It would be very complicacted but I guess it is 'do able'.

Gong back to pairs though, I basically go on the 50/50 basis from experience, if I have not got a pair I usually fold my hand, however in some circumstances I will bet without a pair, for example if I have AK and the board is all low cards on the basis that my opponent would not have played any of those low cards anyway. A lot of players will not play anything below a 10, unless they hold a pocket pair, in which case you are in big trouble , however a lot of players will push all in preflop with mid to low pocket pairs.

Originally Posted by esbo

You don't really believe I that I could not see the messages do you?

You couldn't. For a time.
Aww, and it was such a nice time when you were gone. Too bad.