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Community Bot
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TacticalCoder
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Which adds up to zero and which is normal since in the absence of rake poker is (chip-wise) a zero-sum game.

As a final note, I'd advice to use as few decimal computation as possible when implementing an online poker client: the last thing you want are approximation errors.

But, once again, trying to express each pot as a % of the total pot is a recipe for approximation errors so don't do that.

Moreover, in every single case, no matter how many pots there are, the exact amount of every single pot can be precisely computed, down to the cent.

Note that there may be edgy cases, like what you should do when a player posts a "penalty blind"... Basically it's chips you did put in, but contrarily to any other chips you did put in, it does not really count towards determining the various pot sizes (besides the fact that the penalty blind is added to one of the pot).

As a final note, I'd advice to use as few decimal computation as possible when implementing an online poker client: the last thing you want are approximation errors.

But, once again, trying to express each pot as a % of the total pot is a recipe for approximation errors.

Moreover, in every single case, no matter how many pots there are, the exact amount of every single pot can be precisely computed, down to the cent.

Which adds up to zero and which is normal since in the absence of rake poker is (chip-wise) a zero-sum game.

As a final note, I'd advice to use as few decimal computation as possible when implementing an online poker client: the last thing you want are approximation errors.

But, once again, trying to express each pot as a % of the total pot is a recipe for approximation errors so don't do that.

Moreover, in every single case, no matter how many pots there are, the exact amount of every single pot can be precisely computed, down to the cent.

Note that there may be edgy cases, like what you should do when a player posts a "penalty blind"... Basically it's chips you did put in, but contrarily to any other chips you did put in, it does not really count towards determining the various pot sizes (besides the fact that the penalty blind is added to one of the pot).

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TacticalCoder
TacticalCoder
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There have been several posts already here explaining how to compute side-pots (note that the subject of penalty blinds has not been dealt with but that is another topic).

Here's one such topic:

How are side pots built?

Question. Is the ratio against the total pot... or the other winners? Is this correct? Get a ratio compared to others?

The question doesn't make much sense because you're not expressing side-pots as a "ratio" of the total pot. That is not how pots, pots winnings, pots rake and "pots-splitting" are computed. You're never expressing winning as a ratio of the total pot.

What you do is you compute exactly how many pots and side-pots there are and see which players are eligible for which pot.

In your example, there are exactly three pots:

  • pot 1: 29 (pot one could also be called the "main pot")

  • pot 2: 6 (pot two could also be called "side-pot 1")

  • pot 3: 4 (pot three could also be called "side-pot 2")

The sum of all these pots gives the total pot (39).

Pot 1 has 29 because player 4 is eligible for up to "6". How many players did put up "up to 6"? Five players. Four of which who did put 6 in and one of them (player 5) who did put 5 in. This gives 6 * 4 + 5 * 1.

having gone all in with 6 units to win back less than 7 is a bit questionable

That would indeed be questionable. Thankfully this is not at all how it works. Player four wins back 29, so he's making a net win of 23 (29 - 6). You can also get that 23 by computing: 3 players matching up to 6 (18) + one player matching up to 5 (18 + 5, gives the net win of 23).

Pot 2 has 6 units because it's 2 * 3. You can verify this by checking how many players can match up to 8 (there are only three players who can do that), and then remove what already went into pot 1. Three players did put more than 6 in, so you have 3 * 2.

Pot 3 has 4 units. There are two players who can match up to 10. Once you remove from their stack what already went into the two other pots, this leaves 4 unit in the last pot.

Player 4 has the best hand and wins 29 (+23 net)

Player 3 has the second best hand and wins back pot 2, which only has 6. So although player 3 is a "winner", he's making a net of -2 (he did put 8 in but only got 6 back). This is normal because he's "winnning", but he's still beat by player 4.

Players 1 and 2 do split the remainder (pot 3), which has only 4 units. So they each get back 2 out of their 10 (net loss: -8).

Player 5 did lose its 5. Net loss: -5

Which gives:

+23
 -2
 -8
 -8
 -5
---
  0

As a final note, I'd advice to use as few decimal computation as possible when implementing an online poker client: the last thing you want are approximation errors.

The only tricky case is when players are splitting a pot. In some cases there are no issue (like above, where two players share an even pot), but in other cases you may have problems.... For example if three players are sharing a pot that has 8 cents (can happen at micro-limits). In that case two players must get 3 cents back and one of them must get 2 cents back (giving 2 / 2 / 4 would be a mistake). There's simply no way around that and as far as I know the player who gets only 2 (while the two other gets 3) is randomly chosen.

But, once again, trying to express each pot as a % of the total pot is a recipe for approximation errors.

Moreover, in every single case, no matter how many pots there are, the exact amount of every single pot can be precisely computed, down to the cent.