What Is Dead Money in Poker?

Dead money is chips in the pot that nobody is still fighting for: the blinds, the antes, and anything left behind by players who have already folded. The term carries a second, ruder meaning at the table, where an outclassed entrant with no realistic chance of getting his buy-in back is dead money himself. Both senses point at the same thing — value sitting in the middle, waiting for whoever reaches for it.

Where it comes from

Every pot starts with some, and most collect more before the flop.

• Blinds and antes — dead the moment they are posted, because nobody has chosen to contest them.
• Folded limpers — a player who limps for 1bb and folds to your raise has donated it.
• Callers who give up — someone who calls a 3bb open and folds to a squeeze leaves all 3bb behind.
• Dead posts and straddles — chips put in out of turn carry no range with them.

The maths of stealing it

Dead money changes the price of a steal rather than the strength of your hand. A raise that takes the pot down immediately risks your raise size to collect whatever is already sitting there, so the fold frequency you need is raise divided by raise plus dead money.

The more dead money sits in front of you, the less often your steal has to work, and the wider the hand you can open with.

How to attack it

Say the CO limps, the HJ limps, and you look down at A♦T♦ on the BTN. There is 3.5bb dead in front of you and two players who have already told you they do not love their hands. Raising to 5bb needs to clear the field 59% of the time to break even, and you keep position and the best hand when it fails.

Anted formats compound the effect: the same 2.5bb open attacks a far bigger pot once everyone contributes. That is why the solver-built preflop charts you study should match the ante structure you actually play.

The other kind of dead money

In tournaments the slang meaning carries real weight. Part of the prize pool in a soft 200-runner field is funded by players who will never see the bubble, and that is what makes such a field worth travelling for.

The lesson runs both ways. Sit at a table where everyone opens wider than you, defends more than you and pushes you off marginal spots, and the dead money is you.