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These kinds of numbers always confuse me. How is it possible that your EV is less than somebody else's in the main pot, but more in the side pot despite the dead cards? Maths guys, please explain.

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It has to do with the fact that most of hero's "outs" in the side pot are cards that miss the 66xx. In the main pot though, these are mostly splitting cards with he other AA - so they only count half as much. Remove the other AA and these cards get full value thus greatly increasing Hero's EV.

To illustrate this, look at the win and tie columns for the AA88 hand. They're each about 27%. These main pot wins and losses get split among hero and 66xx in the side pot.

All the ties count as wins for hero in the side pot. This adds about 0.135 to hero's equity, bringing him to about 0.42. As for the AA88's wins, many of them occur when he spikes an 8. Most of these also go to hero.

When two AA hands face off against a third, completely different hand, most of the time the third hand either beats both or neither and so his equity 3 way is only slightly worse than his equity 2 way.