Ties Are Not Like Kissing Your Sister

When a hand is tied and the pot is split, players will often say, "It's like kissing your sister." They mean that a split pot is not very exciting. (I also have heard players say this when they break even for a session. To me, breaking even is far from boring, especially if I've been way behind or even way ahead earlier in the session.) Ties are so important that I believe it is necessary for me to interrupt my series of columns on suited aces to cover the subject. Ties are a very important consideration in poker games with common boardcards, like hold'em, Omaha, and Omaha eight-or-better. It is essential to get used to thinking of your share of ties as part of your winnings. The terminology is often a little muddled. Some players use wins or winning percentage to refer only to pure wins, and don't include ties in this figure. Experts always think of wins or winning percentage in terms of total return. They always include their share of ties as part of the winning percentage of a hand. Let's look at some preflop examples of representative hand matchups and see how this works.



As you can see from hands 1 and 2, there are times when ties are virtually irrelevant. There are cases like hands 3 and 4 in which ties are mildly relevant, but not particularly important. The last four hands are examples of those cases in which accurate estimation of a hand's value or winning chances is impossible without including ties. Notice the ludicrous result of looking at hand 8 without including ties. You might think that aces will win only 2 percent of the time. You will often hear someone refer to a hand matchup as a coin flip. This means that the two hands are roughly equal in the percentage of the time they will win, close to 50 percent. Note that some coin flips, like hand 2, don't contain very many ties, while others, like hands 6, 7, and 8, tie very frequently.

Success in big confrontations in no-limit hold'em revolves around doing two things. The first is to make an accurate estimate of what you think your opponent holds. This may be a range of hands, or in some cases a specific hand. This is the tough part. He may hold the nuts, or he may be bluffing and have nothing. The better players are very good at this, and some experts are absolutely astounding. This, however, is only the first part of achieving success. The second is deciding on the best way to maximize your equity. Maximizing your equity means playing in such a way that you end up with the largest possible return. This may mean finding a way to win the most amount of money. It may mean finding a way to lose the least. If there is already a substantial amount of money in the pot, you frequently will be in a situation in which you will lose less by calling as a big underdog than you will lose by folding.

The simplest cases to calculate are those in which your opponent goes all in (or bets enough to put you all in). You need only calculate the odds you are getting by calling. That's the amount you can win divided by the amount you can lose. For example, when your opponent makes a pot-sized all-in bet, you are getting 2-to-1 odds. You need to win more than one-third of the time to make it right to call. When you make this calculation, it is absolutely essential that you use your real win percentage including ties, not your pure win percentage excluding ties.

Different people tend to think about things differently, and therefore use the same words or expressions to refer to different things. I am used to thinking that a hand's winning percentage is the percent of the time you get money back from the pot. So, I would say that a hand that wins outright 40 percent of the time and ties 20 percent of the time wins 50 percent (all of the pure wins plus half of the ties). This, of course, assumes that you tie only one other player. In the case of a three-way tie, your share would be only one-third of the ties. This number is the one that should be compared to pot odds.

Ties become monumentally important in both types of Omaha. For example, many huge PLO (pot-limit Omaha) pots develop in situations in which two players have the current nuts, but both have some outs to better hands. Look at the following matchup: A K Q J vs. Q J 10 9 with a flop of 10 9 8. Both players have the current nuts, a queen-high straight, so there will be a lot of ties. The first player will triumph with a spade, a queen, a jack, or running hearts. The second player will win if the board pairs nines or tens. If they both hit, the second player's full house will crush the first's potential flush or higher straight. However, the first player has so many more outs that he is a substantial favorite. In fact, he wins 64 percent of the time. Again, remember that when I say wins, I am including half of the ties.

In Omaha eight-or-better, ties are very frequent, especially on the low end. It is common to tie with the nut low and lose high. This results in your getting a quarter of the pot. In fact, this situation is so common that any reasonable eight-or-better player is constantly aware of the danger of getting "quartered." If it is a four-way pot, you will break even, or perhaps make a tiny profit if the blinds folded. If it is a three-way pot, you will lose a little. You have to put in one-third of the money, but get back only one-fourth. Worse still is the case of getting quartered in a heads-up pot, when you have put in half of the money.

In summary, always consider ties when you are trying to determine your winning chances in a hand. If you are curious to see what percentage of the time a hand wins outright and what percentage of the time it ties, the odds calculator that's available at www.CardPlayer.com under "Tools and Tips" breaks the ties out separately. Other odds calculators may give you just the total winning percentage. I would also suggest that unless someone specifically states that he is referring to outright wins, you should assume that he is talking about total winning percentage, which includes ties.

Steve "Zee" Zolotow, aka The Bald Eagle, is a successful games player. He currently devotes most of his time to poker. He can be found at many major tournaments and playing on Full Tilt, as one of it's pros. When escaping from poker, he hangs out in his bars on Avenue A - Nice Guy Eddie's on Houston and Doc Holliday's on 9th Street - in New York City.