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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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