I just went through this thred again and there seem to be a few additons since I was last here. I tried to read most of it but might have missed something so don't flame me if I am repeating something.
A large number of threads talk about lookup tables and how big they become. Also, hashing was consider to be too large. This, however, assumes that the number of possible combinations is 52*51*52.... This is not so.
There are many combinations that are identical. The simplest example is that if all the cards are the same suit then it doesn't matter which one it is.
The reduction in the size of the lookup table would be so large that I think that it would easily offset the extra overhead required to reduce the hand to a unique value.