View to a Kill Pot
Barbara Connors
As most of us know, the most common prerequisite to make the next round of poker a kill pot is for the same player to win two pots in a row. Other triggers for a kill could be a player winning a large pot that meets or exceeds a specified amount-10 times the big blind, for example-or one player scooping both the high and low in a split-pot game. When any of these qualifications are met, the next hand played will be twice the usual stakes. Half-kill games- where the stakes increase by a mere 50 percent- are also fairly common.
The exact details of how a kill pot is initiated and plays out can differ greatly from one location to another. So it’s always a good idea to ask if you’re not certain. But in a typical hold’em game, the winner of the pot will always receive a small plastic kill button (more obscurely called the “leg up” button).
One side of this button is benign; the other side says “kill.” Win one pot, the benign side faces up and everything stays the same. Win two pots in a row, and you become the killer. Button flips, stakes double, and a mandatory kill-blind must be posted.
If you are the killer, that kill blind-one small bet at the new limit-goes out regardless of your position in the betting order. If you are in the small or big blind, then your kill blind essentially replaces the regular blind. You get an economy kill, so to speak. Non-killers in the blinds just post their normal blinds for the normal stakes, but if they want to play in the hand they must complete to the new betting limit. If the killer should win yet again, then he or she must post the same kill blind, and the game will continue to be played at the higher limit until the killer finally loses a pot.
Beyond that, details vary. In some cardrooms, the killer acts in turn before the flop, but other rooms state that the killer must always act last in the preflop betting order, regardless of where the killer sits. Sometimes the kill cannot be activated unless both pots won are of a certain size, usually at least five times the big blind. In other cardrooms, only the second pot won by the killer must meet that standard. And in a few places, neither pot has to meet any standard; simply winning the blinds in a walk twice in a row will trigger a kill. So depending on the conditions kill pots will be quite rare in some games, while in other games the majority of hands played will be at the kill stakes.
Kill games do offer certain advantages for the skilled poker player, namely because bad players tend to play even worse. Loose players will call with even more trash hands than usual, because their hopes of getting lucky become inflated along with the stakes.
Conservative players are intimidated by the higher stakes, making them even tighter and more timid. But on the whole, kill games will be more volatile, and all those hopeful loose players will suck out on you a bit more often.
For the most part, the average player is more likely to be intimidated by the higher stakes than salivating at the chance toplay them. So kill pots tend to be shorthanded, and aggressive play becomes even more effective. When a poker game goes into kill mode, both the risk and the potential reward are doubled, and that has a profound effect on the texture of the game.
Filed under: Poker News