Kicker and split pots

A kicker is a card that is not part of your combination but still sits in your best five, and it breaks ties between equal hands. With K♥ Q♣ against K♦ J♠ on K♠ 9♦ 6♣ 4♥ 2♠ both players have a pair of kings, and the queen beats the jack. If the best five cards are identical, the pot is split equally.

Every example on this page was checked by our poker engine — the same code that decides showdowns at our tables. If a caption here ever disagreed with the engine, the page would simply fail to build.

The rule behind kickers is simple: you always compare exactly five cards. Whatever room the combination leaves is filled with the highest remaining cards, and those are the kickers.

A flush has no kicker in the usual sense, but its five cards are compared one by one from the top, which can look just like one. A straight is ranked by its top card alone. A full house is three of a kind plus a pair, with no room left for anything else.

Your kicker counts only if it gets into the best five. When the board already holds a higher card in that slot, everyone uses the board’s card and the hands in your pocket stop mattering.

The same thing happens with two pairs on the board. On Q♠ Q♦ 9♣ 9♥ A♠, K♥ 3♣ and J♦ 2♣ split the pot: the ace on the table outranks both kickers in hand. Take the ace away — Q♠ Q♦ 9♣ 9♥ 3♠ — and the king plays, so K♥ 2♣ wins. On a double-paired board like J♠ J♥ 6♦ 6♣ 2♠ the highest single card in anyone’s hand decides, and A♦ 3♣ beats K♣ 8♦.

A hand is counterfeited when a new board card duplicates part of it, so it suddenly needs a kicker it does not have. The classic case is small two pair against top pair with a good kicker.

You hold 8♠ 7♠ and the flop comes 8♦ 7♣ 3♥: two pair, well ahead of an opponent with A♣ 8♣. Then the turn and river are K♠ and K♦. Now both of you have kings and eights — and the fifth card is your seven against their ace.

It can work in your favour, too. With Q♣ Q♦ on K♠ K♦ 8♣ 8♥ 4♠ you keep the board’s kings, drop its eights and play kings and queens — beating A♦ 2♣, which only has kings and eights with an ace. When the board pairs, recount your hand from scratch: what you had on the flop is not always what you have on the river.

You play the board when all five of your best cards are community cards. Everyone else can use the same five, so the most you can hope for is a split — unless somebody’s hole card improves the hand.

Four of a kind on the board is the extreme case: everyone has quads, and the fifth card decides. On 9♣ 9♦ 9♥ 9♠ K♣, pocket queens and 3♦ 2♦ both play the king and tie, while A♣ 4♥ wins with the ace.

A full house on the board works the same way, but here a single card in hand can lift the whole hand. On 7♣ 7♦ 7♥ K♠ K♦, A♠ Q♥ and 4♠ 2♣ both play sevens full of kings, while K♥ 2♦ turns it into kings full of sevens and takes everything.

If you are playing the board, stop betting. A split is the best case, so every extra chip you put in is called only by hands that tie with you or beat you.

When two or more players tie, the engine gives each of them an equal share, rounded down to a whole chip. The chips left over go one at a time to the winners in clockwise order, starting from the first seat to the left of the button. With side pots, each pot is split on its own, among the players who can win it — see all-in and side pots.

Here is a real hand from the engine. At the Scribes’ Table (blinds 50/100) the player under the gun limps for 100, the button limps, the small blind folds and the big blind checks. The pot is 350. The board runs 10♠ J♦ Q♣ K♥ A♠, nobody can beat that broadway straight, and three players split. 350 ÷ 3 is 116 with 2 chips left over. Going clockwise from the button, the small blind has folded, so the extra chips go to the big blind and then to the player under the gun.

One chip is nothing to fight over, and the rule is the same for everyone, so over many hands it evens out. What matters more is the small blind’s 50: a folded player’s chips stay in the pot and go to the winners.

• Look at your kicker before calling a big bet. A-K and K-Q are both top pair on a king-high flop, but when they meet on K♠ 7♦ 2♣, K-Q wins only 12% of the time (our engine checked all 990 turn-and-river pairs).
• Be careful with weak aces. A-2 to A-9 lose lots of chips to better aces. Even A-Q has only 26% equity against A-K — the odds calculator page shows the exact count.
• When the board pairs twice, count again. Your two pair may have turned into the board’s two pair plus your kicker.