CMSI 186
PROGRAMMING LA B O R A T O R Y
Spring 2008
Program 1: Video Poker
For our first problem, we’ll revisit some code that you wrote in CMSI 185 — the poker hand classifier. You
will build upon this code to write a text-based video poker program.
Program to Write
Write a set of Java classes that includes a
poker.VideoPoker class. When invoked via java
poker.VideoPoker, this program creates a deck of
cards, shuffles it, then displays the top five cards of
the deck to the user. Each card should be num-
bered from card 1 to card 5.
The program then asks the user to enter the cards
that he or she would like to hold. The user is ex-
pected to enter these cards as a comma-separated
list of numbers, such as “2, 3, 5.” The program
should be robust enough, however, to reject any
other user input without terminating in an error.
Incorrectly formatted input should be met with an
error message and an offer to try again. If the user
enters nothing, then this is interpreted as “hold
none of the cards.”
The program then replaces the cards that were not
held with the next cards on the deck. The final set
of five cards is displayed, and the program states
the poker hand that was formed, if any.
Design Notes
You will need at least three other classes in addition
to poker.VideoPoker:
•poker.Card represents a single playing card, with
methods for determining that card’s suit and
rank, as well as representing that card as a
human-readable string
•poker.Deck represents a standard set of 52 playing
cards, with methods for accessing individual
cards in that deck as well as shuffling the deck
and checking it for validity
•poker.PokerHandClassifier holds routines for de-
termining whether a set of cards contains a
known poker hand
And, because PokerHandClassifier can be somewhat
involved, you should have a PokerHandClassifierTest
class as well.
Gotchas
•Remember that poker hands aren’t disjoint — a
full house contains a pair and a trio — but of
course the full house “wins” because it’s ranked
higher. Make sure to consider that.
•Processing the user’s input — especially in a ro-
bust manner, as specified here — can be a task in
its own right. You should design your code so
that these routines are easy to test, and easy to
modify (this is actually true of all the code you
write, but particularly compelling in this case).
Possible Enhancements
After you have fulfilled the core specifications of
the video poker program, you can explore the fol-
lowing enhancements:
•Add a command line argument which specifies
number of hands that the user wishes to play.
For example, invoking:
java poker.VideoPoker 5
…should play 5 hands of video poker.
•Implement a scoring system; attaining the better
(and rarer) poker hands results in more points
and thus higher scores.
•Improve the user interface; in a text-based envi-
ronment, can the program interact with the user
in a manner that is easier to learn, more enter-
taining, and/or less prone to errors?
•The Java enum construct is a (relatively) new addi-
tion to the language. Look it up and see if you
can use it to improve your code in some way.