A Mathematical Approach to Poker

Our project will be modeling five-card draw poker with one deck of cards. We’ll cycle through every different deck orientation to calculate the probability of winning from each different starting orientation and use that information to inform the optimal betting at each different stage of the game. Five-card draw poker allows players to swap out a few cards from their hands, so we will also create an algorithm that takes a poker hand and provides the optimal cards to swap for the highest average score. It’s an important problem because it will supply a highly informed strategy to optimize a commonly-played and popular game. We hope to expand the current knowledge base around card games and poker specifically. Both of us are passionate about game theory and the probability behind games of chance. We’re going to use for loops to run through every possible deck combination, possibly including missing cards from card counting, and analyse who wins. We’ll include possibilities for different player amounts, most likely 3-5 players. We will most likely use object-oriented programming, create a “card” class with suit and number variables, and then the ability to analyse a list of card objects to detect poker hands in a specific hierarchy in order to guarantee it always selects the highest-value hand from each arrangement of cards.