Ah poker, the family game. My Grandfather Max kept food on the table for six kids by playing poker back in the 50s.

A couple of comments:

• Reduce out patterns. Any time you see line after line of almost the same thing like

      if (   $sorted_values =~ m/a{2}/
          or $sorted_values = ~m/b{2}/
          or $sorted_values = ~m/c{2}/
          or $sorted_values = ~m/d{2}/
          or $sorted_values = ~m/e{2}/
          or $sorted_values = ~m/f{2}/
          or $sorted_values = ~m/g{2}/
          or $sorted_values = ~m/h{2}/)
  [download]

  there's a good chance that you're wasting space and effort. Look for ways to reduce out the patterns. As an interesting exercise, you might try reducing the code to at least 1/4th of it's current size.
• Remember the CPAN. I'd take a look at the Games::Cards module. An interesting way to reduce the size of the code and give it longevity would be to eliminate all of the sections that duplicate the functionality of that module and only focus on evaluating hands. That's one area where their is still a lot of work that needs to be done.

I love this sort of thing. To my mind much too much time with Perl is spent being useful. With automation and all the redundant workforce out there (such as myself) more resources need to be used facilitating leisure and sloth.

One final editorial. As Papow would say, poker isn't gambling. A true evaluation of the odds for a hand needs to include monetary aspects, the personalities and skills of the people playing a game, as well as represent not just individual hands, but the flow of play across sessions. Evaluate that and you'll have yourself a program. ;-)

()-()
 \"/
  `