Kill game, kill pot
A kill game is a variation of poker that is normally played when using the fixed limit variation betting rules. The purpose of a kill game being brought into play is to mitigate a player from winning due to sheer luck. They also allay the chances of causing bad beats where a player wins despite betting against the odds.
During a kill game, kill hands come into play. These kill hands include the placement of an extra blind bet as well as increase the betting limits of the round. Kill games and not very common however, it is not uncommon to see them come into play during home games or games played at private venues. Casinos can also introduce a kill game based on the request of a player or even according to some pre-scheduled time/round gap. Kill games are quite common in community card poker game formats and especially in those that require a forced bet in the form of a blind (big and small) to be placed into the pot. While the format is common in Texas Hold’em, kill games can be brought into play in any form of variations in poker with just minor changes being required to accommodate the prevailing betting formats of that version of the game.
There are many cases when a player wins despite making poor choices on the table. This form of play is normally due to either poor understanding and experience at poker, or simply due to the player trying to play a semi-bluff. Such poor decisions normally lead to increasing the size of the pot to large values and then, the player with the poorer decisions tends to take it away to win while betting on poor odds. In case of players playing on pure luck, these kill hands ensure that the loss is quicker and larger, therefore discouraging them from making bets on poor hands.
There are number of ways of introducing kill hands into a game of poker, known as triggers. These triggers are situations in a game of poker that activate a kill game. For e.g. a kill becomes active if the total value of the pot becomes 10-times more than the value of the large blind i.e. if the large blind is $10 in a $5/$10 game, then once the total pot value reaches $100 or above, kill is activated.
The kill hand is activated on a particular player if that player keeps on winning simultaneous hands. The kill will remain active on the player as long as s/he keeps winning. Once some other player wins the hand, the kill is turned off.
The player on whom the kill hand is activated, has to post an additional blind along with the normal blind. This additional blind is known as the kill blind. In a kill game, the kill blind can be put by the player in any position, not necessarily when s/he has the big/small blind button or the dealer button. The blind is usually twice the amount of the big blind and is known as a full kill blind. Only the kill blind is used to determine the player’s betting amount and the normal blind amount is not considered “live”.
After the first round of betting, everything returns back to normal. Once the full kill blind is active, the stakes are doubled for the game with the kill blind value becoming the minimum betting amount. For e.g. in a $5/$10 game, the kill blind is worth $20. Therefore, the new value of the game becomes $20/$40 for the remainder of the game.
Another variation played on this format is the half kill blind where the value of the kill blind is 1.5 times the big blind. So for the above example, the betting numbers change from $5/$10 to $15/$30.
There are cases when a kill is active but the pot amount reaches twice of the trigger value for the kill. This means that in a $5/$10 game, the kill gets triggered when the pot reaches $100. However, when the pot value hits $200, the kill value gets doubled and thus, the kill is called double-kill.
Forrige begrep: Kicker, Neste begrep: Kitty
