5x5 Poker strategy (with discards)

A casual gaming site has released a new 5x5 Poker game. Players try to attain a top daily score for redeemable reward points. Given the following rules and scoring, is there a strategy that could be employed to maximize scores?

Rules:
Given an empty 5x5 grid, players place cards dealt randomly from a 52-card deck into the grid to make high-scoring 5-card hands. The center spot is already filled, and is Wild (a la Bingo).
The top card is shown to the player, and they may place the card, or refuse and discard it. Players may discard as often as they like, but a penalty will be assessed: -2 for first discard, -4 for 2nd, -6 for 3rd, etc, for as many cards as the player likes. If the player runs through all 52 cards without placing 25, partial hands will be scored, even those that don't consist of 5 cards (i.e. 2 cards that form a pair).

Scoring:

Royal Flush	100	Flush	20
5 of a Kind	75	Straight	15
Straight Flush	75	3 of a Kind	10
4 of a Kind	50	2 Pair	5
Full House	25	Pair	2

A player may lay out the grid with the exact cards he or she wishes, but with massive discard penalties. Is there an optimal layout? When do the number of discards affect positive score flow?

not sure whats optimal exactly but heres what id probably do.

if i got a T, J, or Q. id throw it in the middle attempting to get a royal. if i get an 8 or 9 of the same suit before another card to get a royal, id throw it on the same line attempting to make a straight flush. if i threw a T on the middle line and got a 7, id throw it on the same line attempting to get a straight flush. if i pull a card of the same rank as a T, J, or Q before i got another royal or straight flush card, id throw it on the same line and attempt to get quads or 5 of a kind. if i already have two cards on that line to a straight flush or royal and i pull a card of the same rank, i would then discard that card. KA234 id probably try to get trips or a boat with them unless i can use the K or A with a T, J, or Q in the middle for a royal. 56789, id attempt to make flushes with but if i get a card that completes a straight or leaves me 4 to an OESD id put that card with them instead.

Quote: Dween

A player may lay out the grid with the exact cards he or she wishes, but with massive discard penalties. Is there an optimal layout? When do the number of discards affect positive score flow?

I should think the optimal layouts would be four royals plus five of a kind. Given the low scores for small hands I'm guessing you could safely eat a fair number of discards. Obviously you should never put unsuited 5's and T's in the same row.

Taking a blind stab at it I'd try putting [AKQTJ] on empty lines and the first small card on the center. From there I'd build flushes and trips discarding anything else. After tripping up with the wild card I'd discard any previously seen ordinal and wait for one with three outs to the full house. (Especially since you'll still have two outs to quads at that point.)

The squares that form a small "X" in the center are the most valuable (each of them participates in four lines). So I would try to place the first 10 or J I saw in the center, and until then, I would ditch the "bad" cards in the spots that were not in the "big X" (the small X, plus the corners).

After that, I would occupy an "inner corner" square (#7,9,17,or 19, if they were numbered top-to-bottom) only with a "straight flush" card, i.e., if I put the club J in the center, I would only occupy an adjacent corner with the club 7 through A. I would then try to find "double hit" cards for the as-yet unused inner corners, so if my first placements were the J and 9 of clubs, I'd be looking for a J, 9, or mid-club to fill the remaining three spots. I would use the middle three squares of each side as my "dumping ground".

Obviously, this means that you may not get any kind of decent score at all by holding out too long for something good, but it seems that a mediocre score isn't any good anyway. So you might as well go for the big score--and to that end, save your discards until the end of the game.

are there 7 hands that pay or 5 hands? in other words, do the diagonals also pay? i based my strategy on 5 hands that pay.

How many total hands do you make? I thought the question was about the five-handed version, but looking online I see both that and ten-handed. (ie, rows + columns)

Quote: Caffiend

How many total hands do you make? I thought the question was about the five-handed version, but looking online I see both that and ten-handed. (ie, rows + columns)

i didnt even think of columns for some reason. so thats 12 potential hands.

so either 5, 7, 10, or 12.

Anyone my age remember the Casino cartridge for the Atari 2600? It had a game very similar to this. You had to place 25 cards, one at a time, into a 5x5 array, and were awarded points according to the poker value of the 5 rows, 5 columns, and 2 diagonals.

There's a game on the bar trivia machines called Royal Flash that is similar. It is timed and you only get to discard one card or you can replace one already played card with a new one. Same objective though. Make the best poker hands you can vertically & horizontally. I don't think it counts the diagonal hands.

Clarifications:
The initial grid is all blank, except for the middle spot: It is wild. You do not place a card there.
There are 12 pay lines. [] denotes where a card may be placed, W denotes the wild spot. The dark blue areas show the pay lines.

					/
[]	[]	[]	[]	[]	-
[]	[]	[]	[]	[]	-
[]	[]	W	[]	[]	-
[]	[]	[]	[]	[]	-
[]	[]	[]	[]	[]	-
|	|	|	|	|	\

Since a player uses 24 cards, that leaves a maximum of 28 discards, which would be a penalty of -812 points. OUCH. However, that is worst-case scenario.

One of the best layouts I can come up with uses horizontal royals and straight flushes, with 4 & 5 of a kinds for verticals. Diagonals are not taken into account very well with this strategy:

					15
Ac	Kc	10c	Qc	Jc	100
Ad	Kd	10d	Qd	Jd	100
Ah	Kh	W	Qh	Jh	100
As	Ks	10s	Qs	Js	100
9h	8h	10h	7h	6h	75
50	50	75	50	50	2

+767 = Total
-812 = Worst Penalty
-45 = Optimal(?) Worst-case

Any improvements that could be made? When do you stop discarding and just start placing cards?

Edit: Fixed total from +752 to +767, neglected to add 15 for diagonal straight