That is a really cool solution. Thanks for the explanation! I took a much more... um... naive path lol.

Wow, this is exactly what I did, but in C#. That's cool.

    public class Hand
    {
        public string Cards;
        public int Rank;
        public int Bid;
    }

    public static HandType IdentifyHandType(string hand)
    {
        var cardCounts = hand
            .Aggregate(
                new Dictionary(),
                (counts, card) => 
                {
                    counts[card] = counts.TryGetValue(card, out var count) ? (count + 1) : 1;
                    return counts;
                })
            .OrderByDescending(kvp => kvp.Value);

        using (var cardCount = cardCounts.GetEnumerator())
        {
            cardCount.MoveNext();
            switch (cardCount.Current.Value)
            {
                case 5: return HandType.FiveOfAKind;
                case 4: return HandType.FourOfAKind;
                case 3: { cardCount.MoveNext(); return (cardCount.Current.Value == 2) ? HandType.FullHouse : HandType.ThreeOfAKind; }
                case 2: { cardCount.MoveNext(); return (cardCount.Current.Value == 2) ? HandType.TwoPairs : HandType.OnePair; }
            }
        }

        return HandType.HighCard;
    }

    public static Hand SetHandRank(Hand hand, Dictionary cardValues)
    {
        int rank = 0;
        int offset = 0;

        var cardValueHand = hand.Cards;
        for (int i = cardValueHand.Length - 1; i >= 0; i--)
        {
            var card = cardValueHand[i];
            var cardValue = cardValues[card];
            var offsetCardValue = cardValue << offset;
            rank |= offsetCardValue;
            offset += 4; // To store values up to 13 we need 4 bits.
        }

        // Put the hand type at the high end because it is the most
        // important factor in the rank.
        var handType = (int)IdentifyHandType(hand.Cards);
        var offsetHandType = handType << offset;
        rank |= offsetHandType;

        hand.Rank = rank;
        return hand;
    }