Hand Evaluation

Not every poker software involve game simulations. If you just want to evaluate poker hands, we provide facilities to do so. As we support a wide selection of games, we also support a wide selection of hand types.

• Badugi hands: pokerkit.hands.BadugiHand

• 8 or better low hands: pokerkit.hands.EightOrBetterLowHand

• Greek hold’em hands: pokerkit.hands.GreekHoldemHand

• Kuhn poker hands: pokerkit.hands.KuhnPokerHand

• Omaha 8 or better low hands: pokerkit.hands.OmahaEightOrBetterLowHand

• Omaha hold’em hands: pokerkit.hands.OmahaHoldemHand

• Regular low hands: pokerkit.hands.RegularLowHand

• Short-deck hold’em hands: pokerkit.hands.ShortDeckHoldemHand

• Standard high hands: pokerkit.hands.StandardHighHand

• Standard low hands: pokerkit.hands.StandardLowHand

Standard high hands are used for games like Texas hold’em. When something contains low it means it is a low hand. Lots of these types have the same base lookup. They just differ in the way the hands are evaluated. For example, Standard high hands and Omaha hold’em hands uses the same lookup.

Our hand evaluators are optimized for speed while giving a convenient high level interface.

Creating Hands

There are two ways of creating hands. They are both very straight forward.

>>> from pokerkit import *
>>> h0 = ShortDeckHoldemHand('6s7s8s9sTs')
>>> h1 = ShortDeckHoldemHand('7c8c9cTcJc')
>>> h2 = ShortDeckHoldemHand('2c2d2h2s3h')
Traceback (most recent call last):
    ...
ValueError: invalid hand '2c2d2h2s3h'
>>> h0
6s7s8s9sTs
>>> h1
7c8c9cTcJc

What if you want to evaluate hands from a game setting? No problem.

>>> from pokerkit import *
>>> h0 = OmahaHoldemHand.from_game('6c7c8c9c', '8s9sTc')
>>> h1 = OmahaHoldemHand('6c7c8s9sTc')
>>> h0 == h1
True
>>> h0 = OmahaEightOrBetterLowHand.from_game('As2s3s4s', '2c3c4c5c6c')
>>> h1 = OmahaEightOrBetterLowHand('Ad2d3d4d5d')
>>> h0 == h1
True
>>> hole = 'AsAc'
>>> board = 'Kh3sAdAh'
>>> hand = StandardHighHand.from_game(hole, board)
>>> hand.cards
(As, Ac, Kh, Ad, Ah)

Comparing Hands

First, let us realize that stronger or weaker hands do not necessarily always mean higher or lower hands. In some variants, lower hands are considered stronger, and vice versa.

Comparing the hand strengths is quite simple… Just compare them!

>>> h0 = StandardHighHand('7c5d4h3s2c')
>>> h1 = StandardHighHand('7c6d4h3s2c')
>>> h2 = StandardHighHand('8c7d6h4s2c')
>>> h3 = StandardHighHand('AcAsAd2s4s')
>>> h4 = StandardHighHand('TsJsQsKsAs')
>>> h0 < h1 < h2 < h3 < h4
True
>>> h0 = StandardLowHand('TsJsQsKsAs')
>>> h1 = StandardLowHand('AcAsAd2s4s')
>>> h2 = StandardLowHand('8c7d6h4s2c')
>>> h3 = StandardLowHand('7c6d4h3s2c')
>>> h4 = StandardLowHand('7c5d4h3s2c')
>>> h0 < h1 < h2 < h3 < h4
True