Of course, no Perlmonks thread would be complete without the obligatory CPAN referral... believe it or not, even this has its own module: Games::Cards. It's thoroughly generic, so you'll still have to write your own scoring function (or adapt the Poker Probability processor as suggested by kscwab) but hand management at least is taken care of for you.

To reiterate what mattr said: this is what hashes are for. Why can't you use them? They will simplify your life greatly, really.

And of course, whatever internal representation you choose, don't forget flushes. :-)