I think you've discovered correctly the reason the hand evaluation library does what it does (it must have a rule that says: If no player can make a five card hand with no pairs in it, then find the hand with the lowest pair in it and declare that the winner.
It might be slightly more complicated than that. Razz hands only make four distinct traditional poker hands: no pair, one pair, two pair, or a full house (in particular, you can't make trips or quads). Evaluating the first two is well understood and, really, the only case that comes up in real play. For two pair, I like the previous commenter's strategy of calling, say, JJ33x, "threes-down," and ranking that better than 9944x. Nevertheless, one could argue for having it the other way 'round, I suppose.
Razz full houses are a degenerate case: the only way you make one is to have a hand of the form WWWWXXX. If another player has YYYYZZZ, the winner should simply be the hand that contains the lowest rank among W, X, Y, and Z (see below).
So, we know what it's doing, but is that right? This remains the question.
Robert's Rules seem to imply that normal poker rankings apply in reverse (other than the business of aces being low and the lack of straights and flushes). This would mean pokersource is broken in even the two pair case.
I am almost certain pokersource's handling of extremely poor Razz hands is buggy anyway, though. For example, it says that KKKK333 beats 2222444 but loses to 4444222. The first seems wrong to me. Both hands are Razz full houses. If you choose to rank a full house on the lowest trips followed by the lowest pair, the first pair of hands would be 333KK and 22244; if you do it the other way 'round, the hands are KKK33 and 44422; either way, 2222444 beats KKKK333.
I think I would be embarrassed to report this bug.
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Date: 2006-12-21 22:20 (UTC)It might be slightly more complicated than that. Razz hands only make four distinct traditional poker hands: no pair, one pair, two pair, or a full house (in particular, you can't make trips or quads). Evaluating the first two is well understood and, really, the only case that comes up in real play. For two pair, I like the previous commenter's strategy of calling, say, JJ33x, "threes-down," and ranking that better than 9944x. Nevertheless, one could argue for having it the other way 'round, I suppose.
Razz full houses are a degenerate case: the only way you make one is to have a hand of the form WWWWXXX. If another player has YYYYZZZ, the winner should simply be the hand that contains the lowest rank among W, X, Y, and Z (see below).
Robert's Rules seem to imply that normal poker rankings apply in reverse (other than the business of aces being low and the lack of straights and flushes). This would mean pokersource is broken in even the two pair case.
I am almost certain pokersource's handling of extremely poor Razz hands is buggy anyway, though. For example, it says that KKKK333 beats 2222444 but loses to 4444222. The first seems wrong to me. Both hands are Razz full houses. If you choose to rank a full house on the lowest trips followed by the lowest pair, the first pair of hands would be 333KK and 22244; if you do it the other way 'round, the hands are KKK33 and 44422; either way, 2222444 beats KKKK333.
I think I would be embarrassed to report this bug.