Simple Poker

Hey everyone,

After finishing the JavaScript and GitHub portions of the Full Stack Engineer course, I have completed my first personal project aptly named Simple Poker.

This JavaScript program just shuffles and cuts a deck of cards, and then deals 5 cards into two arrays (you and the computer.) Then each hand is evaluated and a winner is awarded based on the strongest combination of cards.

At this time there are no draws/discards and betting. They are on the list for features to be added. For now its just a straight showdown.

Try it out and let me know what you think!

3 Likes

Very nice. How long have you been working on this ?

1 Like

Thanks! It took me a few months.

It’s concept sounded simple, but when I planned it out on paper it got complicated. And then when I worked on it, it got even more complicated. It was a cycle of roadblocks, taking a break, then having an epiphany. Good times.

You should be very proud of this! As you’ve no doubt discovered, it’s not even writing code that is the challenge - it’s breaking a problem down into it’s smallest logical constituents so that you can feed it one step at a time. Amazing work!

Anyway, I’ll get out of the way and let people leave proper feedback.

2 Likes

Nice work! Great job breaking things down into functions.
I have a few suggestions. You have given each card a name property. I’d suggest using it rather than the shorthand for the final output. (See below.) You might also consider how you could refactor you showPlayerHand and showComHand functions into a single function that takes a parameter (computer or player). The last thing would be a little harder to implement. Consider a function that creates the deck rather than hard coding 52 individual cards.

Suggestions:
const showPlayerHand = () => {
        for (const card of deck.playerHand) {
                playerAttr.cards.push(card.name) //use name instead of shorthand
        }
        return playerAttr.cards
}

const showComHand = () => {
   for (const card of deck.comHand) {
        comAttr.cards.push(card.name) //here too
}
   return comAttr.cards
}
// and then:

console.log(`Your cards are:\n`, showPlayerHand().join('\n'))
console.log(evaluateHands(playerAttr))
console.log('')
console.log(`The computer's cards are:\n`, showComHand().join('\n'))

Output:

Your cards are:
4 Of Hearts
Jack Of Clubs
5 Of Clubs
3 Of Clubs
2 Of Spades
High Card

The computer’s cards are:
5 Of Hearts
6 Of Diamonds
Queen Of Diamonds
Ace Of Diamonds
Jack Of Hearts
High Card

The computer wins the Ace Of Diamonds

Here’s a sample deck building function (using your current card object properties):

        buildDeck() {
          const suits = ['Clubs', 'Spades', 'Hearts', 'Diamonds'];
          const faces = ['Jack', 'Queen', 'King', 'Ace'];
          for(let val = 2; val < 15; val++) {
            let face = String(val);
            if(val > 10) {
              face = faces[val - 11];
            } 
            for(let suit of suits) {
              this._cards.push(
                {
                  name: `${face} Of ${suit}`,
                  shortHand: `${face}${suit[0]}`,
                  suit: suit,
                  value: val
                }
              )
            }
          }
          console.log(this._cards); //See the deck
        },
1 Like

Thanks for the feedback! Now that I have a clearer understanding of how JavaScript handles objects, that deck building function would have spared me several lines of code. Plus I could still use it to debug certain hands.

I guess the short hand notation comes across as somewhat obscure when reading it at first glance.

1 Like

great job , I am new here and I would like to try it but I don’t know how or where to try it , can I have instructions how to try it , sorry for my ignorance.

Thanks. Simplest way is to copy and past the JavaScript code and view the console. You can use Cdoecademy, CodePen or even Visual Studio Code