CAP cash games: count the hand, not the stack
You have 100 big blinds in front of you, but this hand stops taking your chips at 20. That is the useful idea behind a CAP cash game. The awkward part is remembering how much of those 20 BB you have already used.
Ada sets a shallow tray beside a larger pouch of counters. The HPD spade reaches for the pouch after filling the tray. She points to the ledger instead. The spare chips are real, but they do not reopen this hand’s allowance.
The profile used in this lesson
This guide uses the 20-BB CAP profile documented in PokerStars’ UK help, checked on 18 October 2026. Each player has the same per-hand cap and is treated as all-in upon reaching it. Ordinary betting rules still apply where the cap does not change them. This is a rules lesson, not a statement that a particular table is available in your region or client.
The examples use no-limit Hold’em, ordinary blinds and no antes or straddles. All amounts and hands are invented for teaching. Rake is excluded from the pot arithmetic. Check the actual table rules for its cap, entry requirements and charges before sitting down.
Keep three amounts separate
| Amount | What it tells you | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Buy-in | The amount brought to the table when joining | A table’s allowed buy-in range is a separate rule |
| Stack at the start of this hand | The chips you actually have available before posting this hand’s blinds | 100 BB |
| Per-hand cap | The most one player may contribute in this hand | 20 BB in this profile |
Winning a pot can leave you with more than the cap in your stack. Losing earlier hands can leave you with less. For the next hand, take the smaller of the starting stack and the cap as your contribution ceiling. A 100-BB stack has a 20-BB ceiling here; an 8-BB stack has an 8-BB ceiling. The cap does not lend a short stack the difference.
CAP also differs from a fixed-limit raise cap. A limit on the number of bets in one betting round is a different rule. Here we are tracking one player’s total contribution through the whole hand.
Subtract what is already in
Count your own contribution, including your posted blind and every later call or bet. Do not subtract the whole pot. Do not start again at the flop.
Remaining allowance = smaller of the starting stack and the hand cap − your total already contributed.
With a 0.50 big blind, a 20-BB cap is 10.00 money units. If you began with 50.00 and have already put in 6.00, only 4.00 remains available for this hand. Your visible 44.00 stack does not give you permission to put 44.00 more into this pot.
Practice with the hand ledger
Choose an example or enter your own amounts. The calculator checks a call against the remaining cap and the chips available. It does not choose a hand to play, assess a bet’s profitability, or decide whether a raise reopens the action. Use it for study away from a live table.
Check one call against the hand allowance
Use one currency throughout, entered as money units with a decimal point and at most two decimal places. The cap is fixed at 20 BB. Enter the stack before this hand’s blinds and the total already committed on every street, including blinds. Enter only the extra amount needed to call now, not a raise-to total.
JavaScript is needed for the controls. The worked examples below remain readable without it.
Hand ledger
Money arithmetic is exact to 0.01 unit. BB equivalents are rounded half up to two decimal places and marked “approximately” when needed. Extra decimal places are rejected, never silently rounded. This is a study calculator, not a betting interface or a minimum-raise checker. It does not send or save your entries.
Read the examples without the calculator
| Example at 0.50 BB | Calculation | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Big blind already posted; start 50.00; call 1.00 more | 10.00 cap − 0.50 posted = 9.50 available; add 1.00 | Total in = 1.50; allowance left = 8.50 |
| Start 50.00; already in 6.00; call 4.00 more | 10.00 − 6.00 = 4.00; add the full 4.00 | Total in = 10.00; cap reached; 40.00 stays behind |
| Start 4.00; already in 1.50; face a 3.50 call | 4.00 − 1.50 = 2.50 available; add 2.50 | Total in = 4.00; short-stack all-in; cannot match the other 1.00 |
| Start 50.00; already in 6.00; nothing to call | 10.00 − 6.00 = 4.00; add zero | Total in stays 6.00; allowance stays 4.00 |
| Start 50.00; already in 10.00; nothing to call | 10.00 − 10.00 = 0.00 | Already treated as all-in; no further contribution |
In the short-stack example, the opponent has contributed 5.00 in total while you can reach only 4.00. If other players continue, the extra money they match belongs in a side pot. The one-player ledger cannot settle that pot without their contributions.
A 0.03 big blind is the precision test. The cap is exactly 0.60. With 0.10 already in, you have 0.50 available; a 0.05 call leaves 0.45. The display may show 0.50 as approximately 16.67 BB. It still accounts for exactly 0.50 money units.
An entry that asks for 5.00 more after you have already contributed 6.00 to a 10.00 cap needs correcting. Under this equal-cap, no-extra-posts model, it exceeds the table’s remaining allowance. The calculator rejects that combination instead of pretending it describes a legal call. Check whether you entered a raise-to total where an additional call amount was needed.
The flop does not refill the allowance
Take two players who each begin with 100 BB. Both stay in and match the following cumulative amounts. The pre-flop line already includes any blinds they posted.
| Point in the hand | Added at this stage | Total per player | Allowance left |
|---|---|---|---|
| End of pre-flop betting | 3 BB | 3 BB | 17 BB |
| End of flop betting | 5 BB | 8 BB | 12 BB |
| Turn call reaches the cap | 12 BB | 20 BB | 0 BB |
| River | 0 BB | 20 BB | 0 BB |
At a 0.50 big blind, that is 1.50 + 2.50 + 6.00 = 10.00 per player. Each has 40.00 left behind. Both are treated as all-in, so neither can bet those remaining chips on the river. Any undealt board cards still have to be dealt before the hand can be compared at showdown.
A 20-BB cap can produce a pot larger than 20 BB
The cap applies to each player. It does not limit the combined pot. If three players each contribute 20 BB and nobody else puts in money, the gross pot is 60 BB. There is no side pot simply because the total exceeds 20 BB.
Now give Player A only 8 BB at the start, while B and C both have at least 20 BB. A goes all-in for 8 BB. B and C each finish at the 20-BB cap. Nobody folds, there is no other player’s money and the totals already include blinds.
| Pot | Contribution layers | Who can win it |
|---|---|---|
| Main pot: 24 BB | 8 from A + 8 from B + 8 from C | A, B or C |
| Side pot: 24 BB | 12 more from B + 12 more from C | B or C only |
| Combined: 48 BB | 8 + 20 + 20 | Award each pot to its eligible winner |
If A has the best hand, A wins the 24-BB main pot before rake. The better hand between B and C wins the 24-BB side pot. If B has the best hand overall, B wins both. These are gross pot awards, not net profits: A contributed 8 BB and B contributed 20 BB to begin with.
That is ordinary short-stack pot eligibility applied to the CAP ceiling. More players, folded contributions or different short-stack sizes need another ledger. The double-board bomb pot guide works through a different setting where eligible players must be identified before pots are divided. Its two-board split does not apply to this single-board example.
What the cap leaves unchanged
A cap supplies an upper boundary, not a complete betting rulebook. Position, the amount to call and minimum-raise rules still matter. Reaching a small remaining allowance does not let you invent a normal-sized raise. This lesson deliberately does not decide short-all-in reopening cases.
Pot-limit games have another constraint: the maximum legal raise depends on the pot after calling. If you are comparing betting structures, use the pot-limit maximum-raise walkthrough for that calculation. Do not use this CAP ledger as a pot-limit raise calculator.
The next hand is a new exposure
The cap starts afresh for the next hand, using the stack you then have. It is not a session stop-loss. Three separate losses of 20 BB add up to 60 BB. At a 0.50 big blind, that is 30.00 money units across those hands, even though no single hand took more than 10.00 from you.
Set your session limits separately. A smaller per-hand ceiling does not make a call profitable, remove rake or protect you from repeated losses.
Before you count a call
Read the table’s actual cap. Note your stack before the hand. Add up your own contributions, including the blind. Then subtract that total from the smaller of your starting stack and the cap. Only after those numbers agree should you compare the remaining amount with the extra call.
The spade can leave the pouch alone now. The question is simple: how much room is left in this hand’s tray?