podds is a command line tool to compute the probability of winning a (Texas hold 'em) poker round, given the number of players and the available cards. Probabilities are estimated by sampling random games given the available information.

To compile the program simply navigate to its directory and type make.

To run the program invoke

  ./podds <n> <h1> <h2> [<t1> ... <t5>]

Here <n> is the total number of players, <h1> and <h2> are the hole cards (mandatory arguments), while <t1> to <t5> are the community cards (optional, you can specify 0 to 5 of them).

Each card is represented by a case sensitive 2-characters string, according to the following convention:

• 2 to 9 = cards from 2 to 9
• T = 10
• J, Q, K, A = jack, queen, king, ace
• h, d, c, s = hearts, diamonds, clubs, spades

Examples: the ace of spades is As, the 10 of diamonds is Td and the 4 of clubs is 4c.

The results are written onto stdout, and error messages (such as when arguments are not correctly formatted) are written to stderr. This way podds can be easily used from a higher-level interface. The output has the form: <key>:<value> and is supposed to be self-descriptive.Typical command-line interactions look as follows:

bash$ ./podds 5 Ts 9d Js 8h 3c
cores:4
games:200000
win:0.315
draw:0.031
pair:0.367
two-pairs:0.083
three-of-a-kind:0.014
straight:0.314
flush:0.000
full-house:0.000
four-of-a-kind:0.000
straight-flush:0.000

bash$ ./podds 4 Kd Jd Qs Tc Qd
cores:4
games:200000
win:0.406
draw:0.045
pair:0.291
two-pairs:0.290
three-of-a-kind:0.051
straight:0.301
flush:0.039
full-house:0.025
four-of-a-kind:0.001
straight-flush:0.002

• Implement some options (e.g.: how many cores to use, how many games to simulate).
• Find a smart way to determine the default number of games to be simulated (e.g.: bounding the probability that results are inaccurate above some threshold).
• Implement interactive mode (where inputs are taken from stdin).
• Store results in a table (at least for short combos).
• Make available as a library (shared object).