What Happens If There Is A Draw In Poker

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Below find all the rules for all-in situations in poker, how to handle exposed cards in cash games and tournaments plus try our free side pot calculator to help sort everything out.

There are 6 choices for the rank of the pair and 6 choices for the pair of the given rank. The remaining 5 ranks can have any of 4 suits assigned to them, but again we must remove those which produce a flush. We cannot choose all 5 to be in the same suit for this results in a flush. This can happen in 4 ways. Poker strategy when holding a draw is not as straightforward as you might think at first glance. There are many pitfalls where you can lose too many chips if you are not fully prepared. Learning how to navigate around all the different possible lines is a part of mastering your fundamentals.

What Happens If There Is A Draw In Poker Games

Poker Side Pot Calculator - Free Poker Tool

This tool lets you check who wins what when several players are all in. Your home game or private tourney won't have any more fist fights now. Enjoy!

Type in the stacks of the participating players and click on calculate. Click 'instructions' for, um, more instructions.

Rules for All-In Situations in Poker

The 'all in' rules we abide by in poker today were invented to prevent über-rich mobsters from running over small, honest guys at the poker table.

What Happens If There Is A Draw In Poker Game

Before the all-in rule was invented if you had $500 at the table and $10,000 in the bank, if an opponent bet $20,000 into the pot you could not call him -- even if you ran across the street and withdrew all your money from the bank. Even if you had the absolute nuts!

To avoid people betting their cars and farms and wives (or husbands), some humanist genius introduced a rule called 'table stakes.'

It states that in a poker hand you can only bet whatever money and chips you had on the table when the hand started. You cannot reach for your wallet and get more money. You cannot go to the bank and mortgage your condo.

To handle the case where one player bets all his money and the opponent has less money at the table, the all-in rules were introduced. We'll walk you through them.

Betting in All-In Situations

Typically, if a player goes all-in for less than half the amount of a full raise, his bet is considered to have no effect on the betting options. That is to say, if a player bets $100, another player goes all-in for $125 and a third player calls, the original player could not now re-raise as this would be in effect raising himself.

The third player, on the other hand, could still raise instead of call as he has not yet had the option to raise.

Calling an All In is Always Allowed!

No matter how little you have in your stack you can always call with the rest of your chips. When you call with all your remaining chips, you call 'all in.'

All-In Example with 2 Players:

There's $200 in the pot. You have $50 left and your opponent bets $200. If you want to call, you call all in by placing your last $50 in the pot.

In this case the opponent first gets $150 back - the amount you couldn't match. Then there is a showdown and the player who shows down the best hand picks up $300 - the $200 originally in the pot plus $50 from each of you.

So you can always call -- but you can only win as much from your opponent as your stack dictates.

How to Calculate Poker Side Pots

All-in rules for two players are pretty straightforward, as we saw above. When three or more players are involved, things can get pretty messy with one main pot and several side pots -- especially if you're in a home game and have to balance a beer jug while doing the math.

RULE: The ruling principle is that each player matches as much of the opponents' bets as she has left in her stack.

METHOD: This is how you do it. First, the smallest stack matches all opponents' bets. These chips are put in the 'main pot.'

Then the second smallest stack matches the remaining opponents' bets with whatever is left in his stack and creates a side pot. And so on.

Side Pot Example

There are three players with stacks as follows:

  • Player A: $10
  • Player B: $50
  • Player C: $200

All players move all in. Let's start with the smallest stack and create the main pot. Player A has $10 and matches $10 each of the other player's bets. A main pot of $30 is created. This is the money that Player A can win.

The remaining chips of Player B are then matched to the bet of Player C. Player B has $40 left so we take $40 from Player C and make a side pot of $80.

When all matching is done Player C still has $150 left in his bet. This money is returned to Player C immediately. Then the remaining cards are dealt and the showdown is performed. The following pots are contested:

  • Main pot: $30, contested by Players A, B and C
  • Side pot: $80, contested by Players B and C

Tip: Go ahead and check this out in the side pot calculator above!

Now if Player A has the best hand (s)he wins the $30 main pot. Then Players B and C compare their hands to see who wins the $80 side pot. If Player B or C has the best hand this player wins both the main pot and the side pot.

All In Rules when a Player's Stack is Less Than the Small Blind

If a player's stack is smaller than the amount of the small blind that player is automatically all-in in for the next hand they play, regardless of their position.

If the stack is bigger than the small blind but smaller than the big blind the player is all-in in any position other than the small blind (and can only survive if they fold their option).

The all-in player can then only win the amount of their stack and that same amount from any callers or blinds. If the player has less than the big blind they can only win chips equal to their stack, not the whole big blind.

What Happens If There Is A Draw In Poker Winnings

Rebuying After an All In

In a rebuy tournament, if you go all-in and lose all your chips you can buy more chips if you are still within the prescribed rebuy period. If you do this you must do so immediately. You cannot leave the table and come back!

If you do not have the money on hand to rebuy you're out of luck unless you can borrow from someone else at the table, buy the chips, then go get money to repay him or her.

Rules for Exposed Cards in Poker

In most card rooms exposing cards to reduce or encourage action, especially in a tournament, is not allowed. Most card rooms and tournament directors agree that unrestricted showing of cards is unacceptable and that if a player exposes his cards to one person, he must expose them to everybody.

After that though, things get a bit hazy.

The 'Show One, Show All' Rule

A common refrain among poker players who have seen someone show his hand to another player (who presumably has folded) is 'show one, show all.'

This clearly means that since the player has given information to one opponent, all opponents are entitled to the same information.

However, in recent years, this rule has been interpreted to mean 'show one, show both,' meaning if a player exposes one of his cards after the hand is over, the players are entitled to see the other card. In some card rooms the dealer is then required to turn over the other card.

Response to the 'Show One, Show Both' Rule

This rule has been met with nearly universal disdain from card players. Poker professional Daniel Negreanu is particularly outspoken about his opposition to this rule.

The rule discourages players from showing a single card to confuse their opponents and most agree that psychology and deception is very much a part of poker. Still, this may be the rule in the poker room you play in so you should find out before trying to expose one card.

Exposing a Card to Induce or Diminish Action

Another popular poker rule in card rooms is that you cannot show an opponent a card in order to induce a call or a fold. This rule is adhered to most commonly in tournaments since the actions of one player affect everyone at the table.

In the NBC Heads Up Poker Championship, though, players were permitted to expose a single card -- both because it made good television and because no one but the two players involved in the hand would be affected by the action.

Exposing Cards During All-In Situations

Providing there is not more than one player who still has more chips in his stack involved in the pot, there is no penalty for exposing cards once a player is all-in and called.

In tournaments, in fact, it is mandatory. However exposing a card while a player is considering whether to call an all-in usually merits a penalty.

Exposed Cards When Dealing

If you're dealing at home, if the first or second card you deal is exposed the hand is a misdeal. Any cards that have been dealt are collected and the deal starts over.

If any card after the 1st or 2nd is exposed then the deal continues. Once all cards have been distributed as normal the dealer takes the top card of the deck and gives it to the player who received the exposed card. The exposed card is then turned face up and shown to everyone at the table.

It's then put on the top of the deck and the dealer will use it as the first burn card when dealing the flop. If more than one card is exposed during the deal of the hand the whole hand is a misdeal and reshuffled to be dealt again.

Exposed Cards in the Shoe

If an exposed card (ie a face-up card) is in the deck while the dealer is dealing, the exposed card is simply shown to every player and taken out of play for that hand. The deal resumes as normal.

Poker Rules FAQs

Question: Once you've shown your cards, your hand is dead and you're considered folded out of the hand, correct?

Answer: This is a debated question and the rules vary depending on if you play tournaments or cash games. In cash games the general rule is that the hand is still alive even if the hole cards are exposed in the middle of a hand.

One of the most cited set of poker rules available is 'Robert's Rules of Poker' created by poker expert Bob Ciaffone. Rule 12 in the General Poker Rules chapter states that 'A card that is flashed by a player will play.' Similar rules are found in other poker rules collections.

But tournaments are a different story. Here the general rule seem to be that exposed cards are considered dead. It's important to keep in mind that there are no universal poker rules per se and rulings can vary between card rooms and tournaments.

Always check the local rules before sitting down at the table.

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Question: Do you need two decks of cards when the number of players is 7 or over?

Answer: No. In poker you use one deck of cards, end of story. After all, what would you do if a player flipped over five of a kind on the river? If the game you're playing is 7 Card Stud and you run out of cards, you deal the last card open for everyone to use.

Read more:

On the other hand, if you're playing Texas Holdem you could invite 20 players without running out of cards. This is probably one reason Holdem was invented in the first place - the railroad builders wanted all the guys to be part of the game.

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What happens if there is a draw in poker game

Question: If there's a flush on the board can an off-suit card in the pocket serve as a kicker?

Answer: No. According to the poker rules, players can only use five cards to build their poker hand. Since a flush is made up of five cards, there's no room for any off-suit cards to influence it.

On the contrary, if there's a flush on the board, a card of the same suit in a players hand can give him or her a higher flush.

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Question: Can you cash out some of your chips from the table and keep playing with the rest?

Answer: No. If you're playing in a cash game you're playing with all of your chips on the table. It's considered very poor etiquette to try and take any chips off the table ('go south') and it won't be allowed in any poker room.

Home games you can decide for yourselves but again it's considered poor form.

If you do want to cash out some of your chips but still get back in the game you have to cash out all of your chips and leave the table for an extended amount of time before returning.

This is called 'recycling' and while it's generally not encouraged it's not as bad. The wait time differs from poker room to poker room but expect to have to sit out an hour at least.

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Question: Can you buy more chops off another player at the table?

Answer: Another bad idea. If you buy your chips off another player you cut down on the overall amount of chips at the table. The same amount of chips the first player had is now divided into two players.

Chips should only be bought from the cashier or the dealer. If you're player at home it's also a good idea to designate one player as the sole recipient of cash and distributor of chips.

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Question: If you put one chip larger than the size of the pot in, is it a raise or a call?

Answer: Very common question. If you put one over-value chip into the pot without saying anything (at least in a standard casino poker room), it is always a call.

In a home game you can always decide if you want to ask the player if it's a raise but elsewhere if there is no verbal declaration of a raise it is considered a call and the difference between the call size and the chip value is returned to the player.

More Poker Games Rules

Poker Tools:

Brian Alspach

17 January 2000

Abstract:

There are a few 6-card poker games so it is worth looking at probabilitiesfor winning with certain kinds of hands. One chooses the highest ranked5-card poker hand among the 6 cards and values the hand based on the5-card hand. The types of 5-card poker hands in decreasing rank are

  • straight flush
  • 4-of-a-kind
  • full house
  • flush
  • straight
  • 3-of-a-kind
  • two pairs
  • a pair
  • high card

The total number of 6-card poker hands is .

A straight flush is completely determined once the smallest card in thestraight flush is known. There are 40 cards eligible to be the smallestcard in a straight flush. If the smallest card in the straight flush isan ace, then the sixth card may be any of 47 cards. If the smallest cardin the straight flush is any of the other 36 eligible beginning cards,then the sixth card may be any of 46 cards because we cannot use the nextsmallest card in the same suit as the straight flush. Hence, there are6-card hands containing straight flushes.

In forming a 4-of-a-kind hand, there are 13 choices for the rank ofthe quads, 1 choice for the 4 cards of the given rank, and choices for the remaining 2 cards. This implies there are 4-of-a-kind hands.

There are 2 ways to get a full house and we count them separately. Oneway of obtaining a full house is for the 6-card hand to contain 2 setsof triples. There are ways to choose the 2 ranksand 4 ways to choose each of the triples. This gives us full houses of this type. The other way of getting a full houseis for the 6-card hand to contain a triple, a pair and a remaining card ofa third rank. There are 13 choices for the rank of the triple, 12 choicesfor the rank of the pair, and 44 choices for the singleton card. Thereare 4 ways of choosing the triple of a given rank and 6 ways to choose thepair of the other rank. This produces full houses of the latter type. Adding the two numbersyields 165,984 full houses.

To count the number of flushes, we obtain 6-card hands formed from cards in the same suit. Altogether, thereare flushes with 6 cards in the same suit.There are choices for 5 cards in the same suit.There are then 39 choices for a sixth card from a different suit. Thus,there are flushes in 6-card hands, whereprecisely 5 cards are in the same suit. Combining the two gives us207,636 6-card hands containing flushes. Of these, 1,844 are straightflushes whose removal leaves 205,792 flushes.

Let's determine how many sets of 6 distinct ranks correspond to straights.One possible form is ,where x can be any of9 ranks. The other possible form is ,where yis neither x-1 nor x+5. When x is ace or 10, then there are 7choices for y. When x is between 2 and 9, inclusive, there are 6choices for y. This implies there are sets of 6 distinct ranks corresponding to straights. There are then 4choices for each card of the given ranks except we must remove thosechoices producing flushes. There are 4 choices giving all 6 cards inthe same suit. If 5 are in the same suit, there are choices of which 5 ranks will be in the same suit, 4 choicesfor the suit of the 5 cards, and 3 choices for the suit of the remainingcard. So there are choices which give aflush. This means there are 46 - 76 = 4,020 choices not producing aflush. Hence, there are straights of thisform.

We also can have a set of 5 distinct ranks producing a straight whichmeans the corresponding 6-card hand must contain a pair as well. Thereare 10 sets of ranks of the form .There are 5choices of the rank to be paired, 6 choices for the pair, and 4 choicesfor each of the other 4 cards except not all 4 cards can be chosen inthe same suit as either of the cards in the pair. This means there are44 - 2 = 254 choices for the 4 cards. We then have straights of this form. Altogether there are361,620 straights.

In forming a 3-of-a-kind hand, there must be a triple and 3 other cardsall of distinct ranks different from the rank of the triple. There are13 choices for the rank of the triple, and there are choices for the ranks of the other 3 cards. There are 4 choicesfor the triple of the given rank and there are 4 choices for each of thecards of the remaining 3 ranks. Altogether, we have 3-of-a-kind hands.

Next we consider two pairs hands. Such a hand may contain either threepairs, or two pairs plus two remaining cards of distinct ranks. Weevaluate these 2 types of hands separately. If the hand has threepairs, there are ways to choose the ranks ofthe pairs and 6 ways to choose each of the pairs. This produces6-card hands with three pairs.

For the other kind of two pairs hand, there are choices for the two ranks of the pairs and there are ways to choose the ranks of the 2 singletons. There are 6 choicesfor each of the pairs, and there are 4 choices for each of the remaining2 cards. This produces hands of two pairs of the second type. Adding the two gives 2,532,8166-card hands with two pairs.

Now we count the number of hands with a pair. Such a hand must have5 distinct ranks. There are possible setsof 5 ranks. We must remove sets of the form because these correspond to straights. There are 10 such sets leaving1,277 sets of ranks corresponding to a hand with one pair. Given sucha set, there are 5 choices for the rank of the pair, and 6 choices fora pair of the chosen rank. There are 4 choices for each of the remaining4 cards except we cannot choose all 4 to be in the same suit as eitherof the cards forming the pair. Hence, there are 44-2 = 254 choicesfor the remaining 4 cards. This gives us hands with a pair.

We could determine the number of high card hands by removing the handswhich have already been counted in one of the previous categories.Instead, let us count them independently and see if the numbers sumto 20,358,520 which will serve as a check on our arithmetic.

A high card hand has 6 distinct ranks, but does not include straights.So we must eliminate sets of ranks which have 5 consecutive ranks. Indetermining the number of straights above, we derived that there are 71sets of 6 distinct ranks which give straights. There are sets of 6 distinct ranks. Removing the 71 sets correspondingto straights, leaves 1,645 sets of distinct ranks which do not producestraights. There are 4 choices for each of the 6 cards in a given setproducing 46 = 4,096 ways of choosing cards for a given set of ranks.However, some of the choices produce flushes and we must remove them.Clearly there are 4 ways of choosing the 6 cards all in the same suitwhich is one way of getting a flush. There 6 ways of choosing 5 of theranks and 4 choices for the suit of these 5 ranks, and 3 choices for thesuit of the remaining card. This gives us choices of suits which produce a flush with 5 cards in the same suit.We remove these 76 choices which produce flushes giving us 4,020 choicesfor the 6 cards which do not produce a flush. Multiplying 4,020 by 1,645gives 6,612,900 high card hands.

If we sum the preceding numbers, we obtain 20,358,520 and we can be confidentthe numbers are correct.

Here is a table summarizing the number of 6-card poker hands. Theprobability is the probability of having the hand dealt to you whendealt 6 cards.

handnumberProbability
straight flush1,844.000091
4-of-a-kind14,664.00072
full house165,984.00815
flush205,792.0101
straight361,620.0178
3-of-a-kind732,160.036
two pairs2,532,816.1244
pair9,730,740.478
high card6,612,900.325

You will observe that you are less likely to be dealt a hand withno pair (or better) than to be dealt a hand with one pair. Thishas caused some people to query the ranking of these two hands.In fact, if you were ranking 6-card hands based on 6 cards, theorder of the last 2 would switch. However, you are basing the rankingon 5 cards so that if you were to rank a high card hand higher than a handwith a single pair, people would choose to ignore the pair in a6-card hand with a single pair and call it a high card hand. Thiswould have the effect of creating the following distortion. Thereare 16,343,640 6-card hands containing 5 cards which are high cardhands. Of these 16,343,640 hands, 9,730,740 also contain 5-cardhands which have a pair. Thus, the latter hands are more specialand should be ranked higher (as they indeed are) but would not beunder the scheme being discussed in this paragraph.

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last updated 12 January 2000