Split Pot

It is always nice to be the one raking in piles and piles of poker chips. If you are playing live then there is no better feeling then having the dealer pass you a mountain of chips and hearing them click together. It is a similar feeling online and most online casinos have audio sounds that mimic the noise of chips.

Unfortunately though we don't always win the pot and it often turns out to be a split pot. Of course, winning a split pot is better than nothing at all but it is still a big disappointment when you expected to win it all. There are some flops and boards that are more conducive to the pot being split than others.

Before we go into those situations, it is instructive to look at one of the most common split pot situations in poker. This happens in tournament poker where we get two players all in with the same hand. If one player has the As-Ks and the other player has Ac-Kd then the pot will be split a very high percentage of the time. In fact running this through PokerStove highlights that the hand will be a split pot over 90% of the time with the rest made up of flushes where one hand or the other ends up making a flush.

More often than not in this situation, the result of the hand is known after the flop and the turn and river cards are meaningless. One common split pot situation is when the board double pairs. Let us say that the game is limit hold'em and a player raises from the cut-off with the As-Qd and the button three bets with the Ad-Kc.

The flop comes 10h-10s-3c and the cut-off check calls a flop bet. The turn card is the 2d and it gets checked by the cut-off again. The button bets and the cut-off calls and we see a river card of 2s which gives us a total board of 10h-10s-3c-2d-2s. Here both players have two pair with an ace kicker as the three des not play. Neither does the Qd in the hand of the cut-off.

Split pot rules are closely linked with game rules of course and one of the rules of hold'em is that a player can use the board to make their hand and they do not need to use cards form their own hand like they do in Pot Limit Omaha. One of the most amazing split pots that I ever saw happened on my table although the hand didn't involve me. One player raised with A-A and another player re-raised with 8-8.

The aces re-raised and the eights shoved all-in. I don't know why the player with the eights did this although if the other player had been shoving them around somewhat then it is understandable. So the hand was an all-in situation and the flop came J-J-A giving the aces the nut full house. The eights were basically dead but the turn card was another jack and amazingly so was the river card.

The final board read J-J-A-J-J and unbelievably this was a split pot. Both players had four jacks with an ace kicker and the aces in the other players hand did not play. Earlier I mentioned Pot Limit Omaha and if this hand had been played at Pot limit Omaha then this would not have been a spilt pot at all. This is to do with the fact that you must play both of the cards from your hand. So the player with the aces would have taken this pot with the top full house of aces over jacks while the other player would have had jacks over eights.

Another peculiar facet of spilt pots comes when there is a spare chip. Imagine if there is $20.25 in the pot in an all-in situation. If the lowest denomination chip is $0.25 then each player will receive $10 in the event of a split pot but the $0.25c chip cannot be split.

This is where split pot rules can differ from casino to casino. Some casinos put the chip into the next pot or it may even be included as a tip for the dealer. In other casinos the dealer simply deals one card to each player and the highest card wins the extra chip. It is never a bad thing to check on the split pot rules regarding this sort of thing as it can often avoid arguments.

The effect of split pots often dictates poker strategy as well in a given hand. Once again we will look at an actual hand to show what I mean here. It is folded around to our hero who raises from the button with the 10d-9d. He is hoping to win the blinds or get the hand heads up with position against a single opponent.

He is somewhat dismayed to see that both blinds call and the flop comes Kd-Qc-Js giving him a straight. Both of his opponents check and he bets the pot and this bet gets called by both of his opponents. The turn card is the 9h and the small blind leads out for a pot sized bet and the big blind raises.

All three players have very deep stacks at over 200BB and now the player with the 10d-9d who had the flopped straight is in a very awkward situation. The nine appearing has weakened his hand and any other player who has a ten in their hand will be splitting the pot with him. He could also be behind a player with A-10 as well. In this situation with two players both obviously liking their hand then he may be better off folding here.

It is difficult to fold a straight in this situation but he could be putting in the rest of his stack to have a split pot at best. So it is advisable that you familiarise yourself with split pots and how they can arise and what the rules are in certain situations because doing so will make you a far better poker player.

This article was written by Carl "The Dean" Sampson who has been a professional online poker player, poker theorist and writer for eight years. Prior to that he was a blackjack player and has written three books on poker and casino games