All-Ins and Side Pots
Table stakes, what going all-in really protects you from, how main and side pots are built chip by chip, and the incomplete-raise rule that governs short all-ins.
Assumptions: Examples use a $0.50/$1 6-max online cash game with no rake; stack sizes vary by example and are stated inline, since unequal stacks are the whole point of this lesson.
No-limit poker lets anyone bet their entire stack at any time — which immediately raises two questions every beginner asks. What happens if someone bets more money than I have? And what happens when three players with three different stack sizes all go all-in? The answers are table stakes and side pots, and they're pure mechanics: no judgment calls, no strategy, just arithmetic that the dealer (or the software) performs the same way every time. Learn the arithmetic yourself and all-in pots stop being chaos and start being checkable.
Table stakes: your stack is your ceiling and your shield
The table-stakes rule: you can only bet, and only lose, the chips that were in front of you when the hand began. No reaching into your pocket mid-hand, no betting your watch, no IOUs — the cinematic image of a player throwing house keys into the pot is illegal in every real card room.
The rule cuts both ways, and the protective direction is the one beginners underappreciate. You can never be bullied out of a pot because your opponent has more money. If you have $80 and your opponent bets $500, you are not facing a $500 decision: you may call all-in for your $80, and the hand proceeds. Heads-up, the unmatched $420 is simply returned to the bettor — it was never really a bet against you, because you could never have matched it. The two of you then see all remaining cards with no further betting (you have no chips left to bet), and the best hand at showdown takes the pot.
So "all-in" means exactly this: all of your chips are committed, you cannot act again this hand, and you remain live to showdown for every pot you contributed to. That last clause — for every pot you contributed to — is where side pots come from.
Table stakes is also why players talk about the effective stack: against any single opponent, the money that can actually change hands is the smaller of the two stacks. If you have $300 and your opponent has $45, you are playing a $45 game against him no matter what your chip count says — every dollar past $45 is scenery. Checking the effective stack before a hand starts tells you the true size of the decision you might face.
The one-sentence side pot rule
A player can win, from each opponent, at most the amount the player put in themselves. Everything above that is a contest among the deeper stacks only — sorted into one or more side pots that the all-in player has no claim on.
The construction procedure, mechanical and worth doing by hand a few times:
- Find the smallest all-in amount among the players still in.
- Take that amount from every player's committed chips (plus any dead money like folded blinds) — that's the main pot. Everyone still live is eligible for it.
- Whatever the bigger stacks committed beyond that goes into a side pot, contested only by them.
- If there are several different all-in amounts, repeat: each new all-in level seals another side pot. Three different stacks can produce a main pot plus two side pots.
- At showdown, pots are awarded from the last side pot backward to the main pot, each one going to the best hand among its own eligible players.
Example one: building a main pot and a side pot
Walk the chips. UTG open-jams his last $20 holding A♣K♣. You call in the CO with Q♠Q♦ and a full $100 stack; the button calls with 9♥9♦ and $60; both blinds fold. Right now there's one pot: three players × $20, plus $1.50 of dead blind money = $61.50, and everyone who put in $20 is eligible for it.
Preflop, this was closer than beginners expect: your queens were about 43% to win the three-way pot, ace-king suited about 40%, and the nines — facing two bigger pairs — just 18%.
The flop comes 8♣6♦2♥, missing everyone but you. UTG can't act — he has nothing left. You bet $40, covering the button's remaining $40, and he calls all-in with his overpair of nines. Those chips can't go in the main pot: UTG only matched $20, so he can't win money layered above it. They form a side pot of $80 ($40 from each of you) that only you and the button can win. On that flop your equity was about 60% against both hands combined — and 88% against the nines alone in the side pot.
Turn 3♠, river 4♥, and the pots resolve in order. Side pot first: between Q♠Q♦ and 9♥9♦, queens win $80. Main pot second: among all three hands, queens beat ace-high and the nines — $61.50 to you as well. You scoop $141.50. Now rewind and imagine an ace on the river instead: UTG's pair of aces would win the main pot only — $61.50 — while your queens, still ahead of the nines, would take the $80 side pot. A player who went all-in early can triple his $20 but never touches the betting that happened over his head.
Example two: the short stack wins the main, you win the side
The previous hand showed the structure; this one shows the payout logic doing real work — three hands, two pots, two different winners.
The big blind shoves his last $25 over your $3 open with 7♠7♣; you call with A♥A♦, the button calls with K♦Q♦. Main pot: $25 × 3 plus the folded small blind's $0.50 = $75.50, sealed. Everything from here on is between you and the button.
Flop K♣7♥2♣ — disaster in disguise. The short stack has flopped middle set and is roughly 90% to beat both of you; your aces, sandwiched between his set and the button's top pair, hold only about 8% of the three-way equity. But nobody knows that yet, and the betting continues as if the all-in player weren't there: you bet $35 with your overpair — about 82% against the button's top pair, the only opponent your bet can actually win money from — and he calls, building a $70 side pot. On the 8♥ turn you bet $50 and the button lets top pair go.
Resolution. The side pot has only one claimant left — you — so those $70 come to you immediately, no showdown required against the button. The main pot still needs a showdown: your A♥A♦ versus the BB's 7♠7♣ on K♣7♥2♣8♥ plus the river. The 4♦ river bricks, his set holds, and he triples up to $75.50. Net result: the best hand in the hand won the smaller pot. That's not a malfunction — it's table stakes working exactly as designed. The short stack's winnings were capped at what he could cover; your aces lost the minimum to him while winning the betting he was never part of.
Two bookkeeping notes from this hand. First, when you bet $35 into the side pot, an inattentive player might think he's "bluffing the short stack too" — he isn't; the all-in player gets to showdown for the main pot no matter what happens above him. Betting into a dry side pot only ever wins you the side pot. Second, when everyone with a claim to a side pot folds except one player, that pot ships at once, while the main pot waits for the runout.
The incomplete-raise rule
One genuinely tricky rule lives at the junction of all-ins and the minimum-raise rule from the previous lesson: what happens when someone goes all-in for more than a call but less than a full raise?
The all-in itself is always legal — table stakes guarantees you can commit whatever you have. The question is whether it re-opens the betting for players who already acted. The standard rule: an all-in raise of less than the previous full bet or raise does not re-open raising for a player who has already acted on that street. They may call the new amount or fold — but their right to raise is not refreshed.
Concrete spot at $0.50/$1: you bet $10 on the turn, the next player goes all-in for $14 total, and the third player calls $14. The all-in "raise" was $4 — less than your $10 increment, an incomplete raise. When action returns to you, you may call the extra $4 or fold, but you may not re-raise: nobody made a full raise after your bet, so your action isn't re-opened. (A player who hadn't acted yet, by contrast, retains all options — the $14 is simply a live bet to them, and their minimum raise would be $24, the $14 plus your original $10 increment.) The rule exists to stop teams of short all-ins from endlessly re-opening betting, and to stop a player from using a tiny all-in behind to give themselves a second chance to raise. Rooms differ on fine details (some re-open if the shove is at least half a raise), but the version above is the modern standard and what this site assumes.
When everyone is all-in: just run it out
Once no player with live cards can bet — everyone is all-in, or all but one player is and that player has called — the betting structure of the hand is finished. The dealer simply deals every remaining street with no action in between: flop, turn, river in rhythm, then showdown and the pot-by-pot payout. There is nothing to decide and nothing to protect; the equity each hand had when the money went in plays out raw.
Two conventions attach to this moment. In tournaments, all all-in players must turn their hands face up before the runout — the prize pool belongs to everyone, so hidden cards aren't allowed once betting is impossible. In cash games, most rooms let players keep all-in hands face down until the end (and online, sites differ on whether they auto-expose). Don't be startled either way; it changes nothing about who wins. And if you've seen televised players agree to "run it twice" — dealing the remaining cards two times for half the pot each — know that it's a variance-reducing house option some games offer, not a standard rule, and both players must agree.
Scaling up: three all-in levels, three pots
The construction procedure doesn't care how many stacks are involved. Four players at $0.50/$1: stacks of $10 (UTG), $40 (HJ), and $100 each (CO and BTN). UTG gets it in for $10, HJ for $40, CO and BTN both put in $40 preflop and the blinds fold:
- Main pot: $10 from each of four players + $1.50 dead = $41.50. All four eligible.
- Side pot 1: the next layer runs from $10 up to HJ's $40 — that's $30 from each of the three players who covered it = $90. HJ, CO, and BTN eligible; UTG sealed out.
- Side pot 2: the CO and BTN still have $60 behind each. Whatever they bet against each other postflop builds a third pot that only the two of them can win.
At showdown, side pot 2 resolves first (best hand between CO and BTN), then side pot 1 (best among HJ, CO, BTN), then the main pot (best of all four). It's entirely possible — and a rite of passage to witness — for three different players to win the three pots. Each pot is its own little tournament with its own field.
Checking the dealer's work
All-in pots are where mistakes — human or software display quirks — actually happen, so audit them with three questions:
- Smallest stack times players (plus dead money) = main pot? In example one: $20 × 3 + $1.50 = $61.50. ✓
- Each side pot = (next stack level − previous level) × players still contributing? ($40 − $0 beyond the $20 level) × 2 = $80. ✓
- Pots paid from the outside in? Last side pot first, main pot last, each to the best hand among its own contributors only.
And keep the two protections straight, because they're the heart of the lesson: table stakes means you can never lose more than is in front of you, and the all-in rule means you can never be priced out of a showdown you've already paid your share of. The deep stack's extra money gives him leverage over the other deep stacks — never over you. Everything else is just sorting chips into the right piles.