Why was this pot split?

QUICKFEET

Hi, I have only been playing a few months so sorry if this is a dumb question.

On this hand I was very short stacked... I just chucked all-in and "put my coat on". Then I thought I had fluked 2,000 chips by hitting two pair but for some reason the pot was split with someone else who just had a single pair which was on the board.

Why did that happen? My opponent got most of the chips too! Still short stacked I kept my coat on and went out of the tournament a few hands later...

Player	Action	Cards	Amount	Pot	Balance
QUICKFEET	Small blind		75.00	75.00	57.50
4totheflus	Big blind		150.00	225.00	3280.00
	Your hole cards	4 5
bedell	Fold
Shorty9	Raise		450.00	675.00	2327.50
nixon01	Raise		750.00	1425.00	1550.00
QUICKFEET	All-in		57.50	1482.50	0.00
4totheflus	Call		600.00	2082.50	2680.00
Shorty9	Call		300.00	2382.50	2027.50
Flop
		3 3 4
4totheflus	Check
Shorty9	Check
nixon01	Check
Turn
		5
4totheflus	Check
Shorty9	Check
nixon01	Check
River
		8
4totheflus	Check
Shorty9	Check
nixon01	Check
QUICKFEET	Show	4 5
4totheflus	Muck	10 Q
Shorty9	Show	A 10
nixon01	Muck	J 10
QUICKFEET	Win	Two Pairs, 5s and 4s	530.00		530.00
Shorty9	Win	Pair of 3s	1852.50		3880.00

SolarCarro

You won the pot with 2 pair

Shorty won a side pot over the other 3 with Ace high to the pair on the board

So wasn't a split pot, the others had you covered so there was extra chips for them to play with. You only had 75 + 57.50 going in so you can only win 132.50 off each of the other players, you actually quadrupled up!!

Dave

silentbob

Hi Quickfeet

The reason why this was split is because there was a side pot.

You only put a total of 132.5 chips in the pot. There were 3 other callers to your original bet so you can only win a total of 530 chips (4 x 132.5).

The rest of the chips that were bet by the other 3 players go into the side pot which you cannot win. The side pot is then contested between the other 3 players who remain in the hand.

The long and short of it is you can only win multiples of whatever you have put into the pot. In this case 4 x your initial investment of 132.5.

Hope I haven't confused you cos I'm not the best at explaining these things so I'm sure someone might explain it a bit better than me!

QUICKFEET

Thank you both for your replies

Bob, your reply was very clear and saved me from having to Google how a side pot works!

silentbob

In Response to Re: Why was this pot split?:

Thank you both for your replies Bob, your reply was very clear and saved me from having to Google how a side pot works!
Posted by QUICKFEET

No worries Quickfeet, that's what we're here for. The one thing I've definitely learned on this forum is that there's no such thing as a dumb question.

Good luck at the tables

Jay