Ken,
  The requestedHand is always 0 to begin with because hand[0] is always the "real player".  So I hand to handle that case in the "opponentForRobotPlayer" function.
    requestedHand = this.opponentForRobotPlayer(robotPlayerArray, robotPlayerIndex);
    requestingHand = robotPlayerArray[robotPlayerIndex];
I was able to get rid of the if - else.