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Two of the concepts beginners
struggle with are kickers and side pots, so here is a brief explanation of
these common occurrences at the poker table:
Kickers: In poker, the goal is almost always to end up with the best Five card
hand, but sometimes the winning hand isn’t composed of all 5 cards; for
example when you have Two Pair, there is an extra card. If you and your
opponent had two pair of identical rank, the fifth (unused) card would be the
kicker, and act as a tie-breaker. If however, you had identical five card
hands, the hand would be a split. See below for two examples of when kickers
do and do not play:
A) Kicker Does play
You Hold: A(H) 7(D)
Opponent Holds: A(C) 4(S)
Board shows: A(D) A(S) 8(D) 3(D) 2(H)
You would win this hand because both you and your opponent play the 3
strongest board cards, so your hand becomes A A A 8 7 against his A A A 8 4.
This is a typical kicker situation.
Kicker Does NOT play
Suppose the turn had come the 9 (D) instead of the 3. In this case, the 9
would make up each of your hands, and the fact that you hold a 7 against your
opponents 4 becomes a moot point. You hold identical A A A 9 8 hands and the
pot is split.
To summarize, when comparing hands you will only ever look at the top 5,
regardless of what else is held, if the top 5 are identical then it’s a split
pot, if they aren’t you have a winner!
Side Pots: Another tricky concept can be side pots; while this may be simple
enough in some applications, side pots can become complicated when you have
multiple players going all-in with different chip counts. The golden rule when
deciding who takes which chips is as follows: No player may ever win more
chips from any other player than they wagered initially. Sounds simple, but it
can become relatively complex, see the examples below for the application of
side pots:
All Players go all in:
Player 1 has $900
Player 2 has $742
Player 3 has $1059
What happens if:
a) Player 1 wins: Player 1 will collect all of Player 2’s chips, and $900 of
Player 3’s chips. He will take the entire pot, less the additional $159 that
Player 3 gets to keep. Player 2 will be eliminated.
b) Player 2 wins: Player 2 will automatically collect $742 from each of the
other players; if Player 3 has a stronger hand than Player 1, he will collect
the $158 from the pot and Player 1 will be eliminated. If Player 1 has a
stronger hand than Player 3, Player 1 will collect $158 from Player 3 and no
one will be eliminated.
c ) Player 3 wins: Both other players will be eliminated as they cannot cover
Player 3’s $1059 wager.
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