> I can't think of a better way out of this, other than to look
> at all sixty
> possibilities, and take the best (or for low, worst) ranking
> ones as the
> "reading" of the hands.
>
> Anyone have anything more elegant?
>

Actually, I consider brute-force evaluation to be elegant. At
least for the high case. But that's in the eye of the beholder.

Brian's "sentinel hand" idea is nice. It is a good way of using
an existing tool (5-card eval) to solve a new problem (omaha
eval). I wonder how often the omaha hand equals the sentinel
hand.

But to really do it right, you would need to recode the evaluator
from scratch. Imagine your own thought process when evaluating
an omaha hand: there are a lot of shortcuts. For example, if
there is no pair on board and a 3-flush, then check the holecards
for a 2-flush in that suit. If yes, check for a straight flush
and done. Etc.

My intuition says you could implement an omaha hand eval that
averaged perhaps 5-10 times the work of a 5-card eval. That's an
improvement on 60, and probably an improvement on Brian's
sentinel technique. But a factor of 4 improvement is in the
"barely interesting" category from a performance standpoint. So
I think an omaha evaluator would be a labor of love.

-Michael M



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