A
kicker, also called a
side card, is a card in a
pokerPoker is a sport from the family of card games that share betting rules and usually hand rankings. Poker games differ in how the cards are dealt, how hands may be formed, whether the high or low hand wins the pot in a showdown , limits on bets and how many rounds of betting are allowed...
hand that does not itself take part in determining the rank of the hand, but that may be used to break ties between hands of the same rank. For example, the hand
Q-Q-10-5-2 is ranked as a pair of queens. The
10,
5, and
2 are kickers. This hand would defeat any hand with no pair, or with a lower-ranking pair, and lose to any higher-ranking hand.
A
kicker, also called a
side card, is a card in a
pokerPoker is a sport from the family of card games that share betting rules and usually hand rankings. Poker games differ in how the cards are dealt, how hands may be formed, whether the high or low hand wins the pot in a showdown , limits on bets and how many rounds of betting are allowed...
hand that does not itself take part in determining the rank of the hand, but that may be used to break ties between hands of the same rank. For example, the hand
Q-Q-10-5-2 is ranked as a pair of queens. The
10,
5, and
2 are kickers. This hand would defeat any hand with no pair, or with a lower-ranking pair, and lose to any higher-ranking hand. But the kickers can be used to break ties between other hands that also have a pair of queens. For example,
Q-Q-K-3-2 would win (because its
K kicker outranks the
10), but
Q-Q-10-4-3 would lose (because its
4 is outranked by the
5).
Kickers in Draw Poker
The term is also used in
draw pokerDraw poker is any poker variant in which each player is dealt a complete hand before the first betting round, and then develops the hand for later rounds by replacing, or "drawing", cards....
to denote an unmatched card (often an ace) retained by a player during the draw in the hope that either it will be paired on the draw, or else play as a kicker (in the first sense) on the
showdownIn poker, the showdown is when, if more than one player remains after the last betting round, remaining players expose and compare their hands to determine the winner or winners. To win any part of a pot if more than one player has a hand, a player must show all of his cards faceup on the table,...
. A kicker may also be retained in order to deceive an opponent, for example, to represent a three-of-a-kind when the player has only a pair.
Kickers in Texas hold 'em
Kickers take on special importance in
Texas hold 'emTexas hold 'em is the most popular poker game in the casinos and poker card rooms across North America and Europe, and online...
, 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. For example, if one player holds
A-Q, a second player holds
A-10, and the board is
A-J-8-5-3, the player with the
Q kicker wins because
A-A-Q-J-8 defeats
A-A-J-10-8. However, if the board held
A-K-5-9-5, the players would tie, because both would play the hand
A-A-5-5-K; in this case it is said that the players' kickers "don't play", or that the "kicker on the board plays". In this case, there would be a split pot.