What Steve wrote pretty much summerizes my flow-chart approach.
Unlike Steve, I have two groups (1) initial hands that end up either
as either a Full house or Quad OR (2) initial hands that end up as
straights or flushes (straight flush or royal flush are treated as
subset of flushes).
When I create my flowcharts, I try to design it with a human element
so that the downtime to learning the game is minimize. For example,
in 9/6 JOB, the first decision is identify 5-card hands that do not
affect strategy (e.g. there is no need to hit the draw button): RF,
STFL, Quads, and Full house. The second decision is to identify non-
5-card hands that do not affect strategy (e.g. there is a need to
hit draw button): trips and two-pair. The third decision question is
to count the number of cards of the same suit. If there are three or
more cards of the same suit (flush cards), it goes down path 1,
otherwise it goes to the default path. You get the pattern; btw,
there is a total of 6-decision steps to arrive at basic strategy for
this game. Not all of my decision steps are binary, although that is
my goal. Lastly, please note my flow-chart is to arrive at basic
strategy, not max ev.
Since Steve has done a great job explaining his concepts, I will
stop here except to stress efficient programming short-cuts may not
necessary translate into efficient human-based strategies.
ยทยทยท
--- In vpFREE@yahoogroups.com, Steve Jacobs <jacobs@x> wrote:
Then I divide the payoffs into three classes. The "grouped"
payoffs are one pair, two pair, 3/kind, full house and 4/kind.
If your held cards already have a group, then it becomes
impossible to draw straights or flushes, so you can skip
the computations of straight, flush, str-flush and royal.
The second class of hands combines straights, str-flush
and royal -- any kind of hand that permits a straight to
be drawn. The third class is flushes where no straight
is possible. If the held cards do not permit any straights,
then you can skip the computation of straights, str-flush
and royals since none of these hands are possible.