Texas Holdem Ties And Kickers

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• A - if two or more players are holding the same type of hand, the kicker card helps in determining the winner. For example – if player A has 10-5, B has 10-8 and the board comes 2-4-J-10-k, both players have a pair of 10s. In this situation, player B will win as the kicker card ‘8’ is higher than player A’s ‘5’.
• Kicker Kicker is a single card. Kicker only comes into play when the main part of the hand is not five cards and can tie. If the highest kicker ties then you just go to the next highest and so on. Two pair and 4 of a kind hand is 1 kicker. Trips have 2 kickers. Nothing is all kickers. Nuts Based on the board you have the best possible hand.

Hand Rankings
Hand rankings decide which player will win all the money in the pot! Here we have all of the hand rankings, starting with the biggest possible hand.

Kickers take on special importance in Texas hold 'em, because a common winning hand is one card in a player's hand matched with a card on the board, while the player's second card acts as a kicker.

Royal Flush

Straight Flush

Four of a Kind

Four Of A Kind comprises of a kicker and four cards of the identical rank. The participant who has the highest kicker wins in the case of a draw.

Full House

It encompasses of 3 cards of the similar rank and two of an added similar rank. The participant who has the highest identical rank card wins in the case of a draw.

Flush

Straight

It consists of five cards (in poker sequence) of the identical suit. The participant who has the maximum ranking card at the apex of the arrangement conquests in the case of a draw.

Three of a Kind

Two Pair

Pair

High Card

Ties & Kickers

Texas Hold’em Rules
Played with the standard deck of 52 cards where each player is dealt 2 cards, and four betting phases will follow as 5 community cards will be dealt during the game. These 2 cards dealt to you (known as ‘hole cards’) will be your own cards that will be used to form the best 5 cards together with the community cards by the end of the game.
In No-Limit Texas Hold’em, each betting round allows for players to bet all their chips, while other variants such as pot-limit, only allows the player to bet a maximum of what’s in the pot(which is the money in the middle of the table) during that betting round.

Betting, Blinds and Showdown
The game starts by deciding which player gets dealt the first card, and which player has the last action of the round. This is determined by which player is the ‘Dealer’, followed by the ‘Small Blind’ and the ‘Big Blind’. Betting is done during each of the 4 betting phases, followed by a showdown where an eventual winner will win the pot!

Betting
A player has 5 betting actions available to them in most situations, ‘Fold’, ‘Call’, ‘Check’, ‘Bet’ or ‘Raise’.

Fold – A player may choose to fold at any time during any of the betting rounds if they feel that they can’t win the hand, however the player forfeits any chips invested into the pot.

Call – In order to continue playing the hand, a player may choose to ‘Call’, which is putting in the amount equal to what a previous player had bet. During the ‘Pre-Flop’ betting phase, this would be equal to the current ‘Big Blind’ amount if no raise has been made.

Check – If there are no bets in the current round, the player can choose to ‘Check’ and pass the action to the next player in hand or proceeding to the next betting phase.

Bet – If there are no bets in the current round, a player can choose to bet, which means the other players have to put in chips as well in order to continue or win the pot (Minimum would be equal to the Big Blind). and the maximum would depend on No-Limit or Pot-Limit)

Raise – If there was a bet before the player during the current betting phase, the player may choose to ‘Raise’ by increasing the bet amount by at least double the previously bet amount.
If a player decides to put all his money into the pot, this player would be considered to be ‘All-In’ and would see the “Showdown’ should any other player call. A player that does not have enough chips to raise or bet at least 1 Big Blind will also be considered to be ‘All-In’.

Blinds & Dealer
The dealer and the blinds decide the order of which player gets to act first or last during the betting phases. The 2 players to the left of the dealer are the ‘Blinds’, where the player immediately to the left of the dealer would be the ‘Small Blind’, and the next player would be the ‘Big Blind’. The ‘Small Blind’ gets dealt the first card and the ‘Dealer’ would be dealt the last card.

Big Blind
The ‘Big Blind’ is forced to put in 1 ‘Big Blind’ which is determined by the stakes of the table, which can be seen under ‘Stakes’ in the lobby, such as $0.50/$1. The ‘Big Blind’ amount would also be the minimum bet size for the betting round. This player will have the last action during the ‘Pre-Flop’ betting phase, and even has the chance to win the ‘Small Blind’ should all players fold during this phase!

Small Blind
The ‘Small Blind’ is forced to put in half the amount of the ‘Big Blind’, and would be the second-last player to act ‘Pre-Flop’, situated immediately to the left of the dealer.

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Dealer
This is also known as having the ‘Dealer Button’, which indicates that this player has the last betting action after the ‘Pre-Flop’ phase. This is usually an advantageous position since this player has the knowledge of seeing what the players do before him/her, while having the option to ‘Fold’, ‘Call’, ‘Check’, ‘Bet’ or ‘Raise’.

Betting Phases
There are 4 betting phases during a round of Texas Hold’em, which are the times where players must choose one of the above betting actions to take. This is where the game gets exciting!

Pre-Flop
This is the start of the game where each player gets their own personal cards, where the action begins with the player after the ‘Big Blind’.
Now the first betting phase begins as players decide if they would want to ‘Fold’, ‘Call’ or ‘Raise’ without seeing any of the community cards. Once all players have made their decision, the ‘Flop’ will be dealt.

Flop
The first 3 community cards are dealt, where all players in the hand can use together with their own cards to form the best possible hand. This betting phase begins with the player to the left of the dealer button, and betting action continues clockwise.
Turn
The next community card, also known as the ‘Turn’ card, will be dealt once betting action on the ‘Flop’ has been completed. The next round of betting action continues with the players still in the hand in the same manner, starting with the remaining players to the left of the dealer button. Once all betting is completed and 2 or more players are still in the hand, the “River’ card will be dealt.

River
The final community card is dealt, known as the ‘River’ card, putting 5 community cards in play.
Players will now know the final strength of their hand, and the last betting phase begins in the same order as before, with the remaining players. Many players choose this time to bluff in order to avoid a ‘Showdown’ with a weak hand, so beware!

Showdown
When there are more than 1 player left in the hand after the ‘River’ card is dealt and betting is completed, the players will have the final ‘Showdown’ that determines the winner of the hand.
This starts with the player who bet last to show his hand, or if no bet was made on the river, the player closest to left of the ‘Dealer’ will show his cards first.
The player with the best 5 card hand ranking will win the pot! In the event of a tie, the pot is divided equally with the players with the best hand.

GOOD LUCK AND LET THE GAME BEGIN!
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The Basic Concept of Kickers

Let's look at a basic example of poker kickers to give you an idea of what this involves. Suppose we have the following match-up in an Omaha game:

What you can see here is that both players have a pair of aces. However, Hero has a king kicker, and Villain has a jack kicker. Since a king is higher than a jack, Hero gets the pot. This is a very straight-forward form of tie-breaking, but it can lead to some complications in certain types of scenarios. We want to clear up all possible misunderstandings for you with the following concept.

Poker Hands Use Five Cards

Poker hands use five cards. This might seem like the most obvious thing in the world, but if you always know which five cards you are using to make the best hand possible, then you can eliminate a lot of mistakes when it comes to not realizing which kickers were in play. Consider the following Texas Holdem example:

Both players have the same two pair hand of aces over nines. From a first glance, it would look like Villain has the higher kicker. However, this hand is actually a tie. The reason for this is easy to see if you look at the best five card poker hand that each player has. Hero has A♦A♣9♥9♠J♦, and Villain has A♦A♥9♥9♠J♦. In this case, both players actually have the same jack kicker, and the other cards in their respective hands are irrelevant.

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When Playing Omaha

If you're playing Omaha, the same exact idea applies of making sure that you use precisely five cards. The only difference is that you're forced into using three cards from the board and two cards from your hand. What's ironic is that this can actually make keeping up with your kickers easier since you are forced into avoiding a lot of the common mistakes that people make in holdem.

Hands of a Higher Rank

If you use this idea of making sure you think of the five card hand that each player has, then you will eliminate every possible mistake that you can make with kickers. With that having been said, it's still good to know common scenarios where kicker problems can come up, and we're going to look at how they work with hands of a higher rank.

Kickers and Flushes

While kickers are typically viewed as being the cards outside of a hand that break a tie, sometimes the cards that are inside of a hand can be used to break a tie as well. In this case, you still have to look at the five cards that make up the hands at showdown. For a good example of this, look at how this seemingly silly holdem hand plays out at showdown:

Take a moment with this example to verify that neither of these players have straight-flushes. Once you do that, you'll want to figure out which player has the highest hand by evaluating their respective flushes. To do that, you list out the five highest cards that each player has available to them in the suit of that flush. This process gives you the following two hands:

To evaluate these hands, you'll need to line up the cards in descending order like we have done in the chart above. Once you have them listed out correctly, work from left to right seeing which player has a higher kicker first. In this example, the tie-breaker comes down to the fourth card of the flush because Hero has a seven while Villain has a six.

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Four of a Kind

Even hands as large as four of a kind can come down to a kicker. Consider the following highly-instructive example:

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When most people look at a hand like this, they immediately feel as if Hero should have the advantage because his pocket pair has connected with the board on the river. However, both players actually have four of a kind here, and so the fact that Hero has caught a jack on the river is irrelevant. The final hand for Hero will be 9999J, but the final hand for Villain will be 9999Q. As we can see, Villain has the higher kicker and would be awarded the pot.

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