Poker Run

You play a run of R rounds of poker hands with a 52-card deck. Each round has a score target; miss one and the run ends. Between rounds you visit a shop to buy modifiers, level up hand types and edit your deck. You know everything in advance: the input lists the draw order of every round and every shop's offers. Output the moves that score the most points.

Cards #

Cards have ids 0–51. Card i starts with rank i mod 13 (0=2, 1=3, …, 8=10, 9=J, 10=Q, 11=K, 12=A) and suit i div 13 (0=S, 1=H, 2=D, 3=C). So 0 is 2♠, 12 is A♠, 13 is 2♥ and 51 is A♣. The shop can change a card's rank or suit; its id never changes.

A card's chips are its face value for 2–10, 10 for J, Q and K, and 11 for an ace.

A round #

At the start of round r your draw pile is that round's draw order from the input, keeping only the cards still in your deck. You draw from the front until you hold H cards (your hand size). You have P plays and D discards.

• play 1 to 5 cards from your hand. They score (below), leave your hand, and you draw back up to your hand size.
• discard 1 to 5 cards from your hand. They leave your hand and you draw back up. Uses one discard.
• end the round early. Allowed only once the round's points have reached its target.

The round ends when you use your last play, when your hand is empty, or when you end it. If the round's points are below its target T_r, the run is over. Otherwise you have cleared the round and earn money:

• $4, plus
• $1 for each unused play, plus
• interest: $1 for every $5 you held when the round ended, at most $5.

After the last round there is no shop and the run is over.

Scoring a play #

The cards you play make the strongest hand type they can, in this order from weakest to strongest:

Straights and flushes need all 5 cards. A-2-3-4-5 is a straight; there is no wrap-around (Q-K-A-2-3 is not). FV, HF and F5 need duplicate cards, which the shop's paint and promote can make.

The scored cards are the cards that make the hand: all five for ST, FL, FH, SF, FV, HF and F5; the cards whose rank appears 2 or more times for PR, TP, TK and FK; the highest card for HC. Other cards you play are kickers: they leave your hand but don't score.

base  = hand base + (level - 1) * base per level + chips of the scored cards
mult  = hand mult + (level - 1) * mult per level
then each modifier you own adds to base or mult, or multiplies the result
points = base * mult * (product of all multipliers)

All arithmetic is on integers.

Modifiers #

You own at most M modifiers, never two of the same one.

The shop #

After clearing round r (except the last) you are in the shop. Its offers come from that shop's queue in the input: you see 3 at a time, starting with the first three. A bought offer leaves the window. reroll moves the window to the next three in the queue.

You start the run with $4. Money never goes below zero: a move you can't afford is illegal.

Input #

R H P D M Q
T_1 T_2 ... T_R
O_1            (52 card ids: the draw order of round 1, first drawn first)
...
O_R
S_1            (Q modifier names: the offer queue of the shop after round 1)
...
S_{R-1}

Every test uses R=8, H=8, P=4, D=3, M=5, Q=12 and targets 300 600 1200 2400 4800 9600 19200 38400. Only the draw orders and offer queues change from test to test.

Output #

S
move_1
...
move_S

One move per line, as in the tables above, for example play 12 25 38, discard 3 4 5, buy momentum, level FL, paint 7 H, next.

You may stop before the run is over. Any illegal move (a card not in your hand, a move from the wrong phase, an item you can't afford, more moves after the run is over) makes the whole output invalid.

Score #

Your score on a test is the total points of all your plays across the run, including the round you failed. An invalid output scores 0.

The time limit is 2 seconds per test.

Example #

Round 1 of seed 7 starts with 23 9 50 17 45 8 26 16 in hand: Q♥ J♠ K♣ 6♥ 8♣ 10♠ 2♦ 5♥. The best play right now is a High Card (K♣: base 5 + 10 = 15, mult 1, 15 points).

The next cards in the draw order are 40 33 47 29: 3♣ 9♦ 10♣ 5♦. So discard 26 16 17 45 draws them, and then play 33 8 9 23 50 (9♦ 10♠ J♠ Q♥ K♣) is a Straight: base 30 + 9 + 10 + 10 + 10 + 10 = 79, mult 4, 316 points, enough for the round's target of 300 with three plays to spare.

Generator #

python -m poker_run gen --seed S writes test case S. The generator is generate() in instance.py; web/engine.js has the same code, so the browser shows the exact same cases.

1. Seed a mulberry32 generator with S (32-bit). below(n) is floor(next() * n).
2. For each round 1..R, shuffle the list 0, 1, ..., 51 with Fisher–Yates (for i from 51 down to 1: swap(i, below(i + 1))). That is the round's draw order.
3. For each shop 1..R-1, shuffle the 18 modifier names in the order of the statement's table the same way and keep the first Q = 12. That is the shop's offer queue.

The parameters are fixed: R=8, H=8, P=4, D=3, M=5, Q=12, with targets 300 × 2^(r-1), rounded to tens: 300 600 1200 2400 4800 9600 19200 38400.

Public seeds are 1–10. Use other seeds for your own testing, and keep a disjoint set for tuning parameters so you don't overfit.

Reference numbers #

The baseline (python -m poker_run.baseline, greedy with no look-ahead) on the public seeds:

Mean 12235, mean rounds cleared 3.6. Its outputs and the checker's verdicts are in tests/fixtures/poker_run/public/. On seeds 1–40 the baseline clears 3.2 rounds on average and never all 8.