Gambling Guide

Hand-for-hand situations in poker arise exclusively during tournaments at times in which multiple tables are in play and there must be a definitive player ranking.

In poker tournaments, the order of elimination is the means of determining player rank. Because rank directly amounts to a particular payout, at times during a tournament play is slowed down to ensure accurate measurement of player elimination. Hand-for-hand play requires all hands be dealt at the same time. When a table has finished a hand, the dealer must wait until all tables have finished to commence the next hand.

Note that this does not affect how a particular table 'plays' their hands; only the deals must be simultaneous.

Hand-for-hand play usually starts when the next player (or players) to leave the tournament will be the last place at a given payout. Most poker tournaments, for simplicity, group payouts based upon rank below the final table. Twentieth to eighteenth may be paid the same amount, and seventeenth through fourteenth may be paid a higher amount, for example. In this scenario, hand-for-hand will most likely commence with 21 and 18 players remaining. At the 2005 World Series of Poker Main Event, day 4 started in hand-for-hand, with eliminations required until 561 players remained.

Hand-for-hand play eliminates ties, except for one, exceptionally rare situation. If multiple players go all-in during one hand run hand-for-hand, assuming all players all-in are eliminated, the players are ranked according to chip count, the amount the player had in front of them at the beginning of the hand. Players are only awarded a tied rank if they have identical pre-hand chip counts, in which case the prizes are customarily split by both players. In some situations, pre-hand chip counts may not be available, in which case, all players eliminated on a given hand are considered to have tied for the same rank. For example, at the 2004 World Series of Poker Main Event, where 225 players were scheduled to be in-the-money, hand-for-hand play was held with 226 players. Two players were eliminated on the same hand, and were considered tied for 225th; they initially split the $10,000 prize before the casino elected to give them each $10,000.

Technically, the final table is also hand-for-hand, but as there is no other table to delay play, all hands are dealt once the previous hand has ended.