What Is the Kitty in Poker?
The kitty in poker is a shared fund of chips set aside from pots, historically to pay for cards and refreshments. Here's what the kitty means and its origin.
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The kitty in poker is a shared fund of chips or money set aside from pots — historically to pay for the group’s own expenses, such as a fresh deck of cards, snacks, drinks, or the room. It belongs to the whole table rather than to any single winner. The word is older than casino poker and is most at home in friendly and club games, where a small amount is skimmed over many hands into a communal pool.
What the kitty is for
In a traditional home or club game, the kitty covered whatever the group needed to keep playing:
- Cards — replacing worn or marked decks.
- Refreshments — food and drinks for the table.
- Venue costs — a small contribution toward the room or host.
- A shared prize or carryover — some games let the kitty build into a bonus paid out later.
Because the money is communal, no individual “wins” the kitty in the way they win a pot. It is a group resource, funded by everyone and spent for everyone’s benefit.
Where the word comes from
The most widely cited origin is the word “kit” — a collection of shared gear or a common pool of items. Over time “kitty” came to mean any communal fund that a group pays into. Card players adopted it for the pot of chips reserved for shared expenses, and the term stuck. It sits among poker’s oldest pieces of table vocabulary, the kind of homespun slang you’ll find explained in our poker slang guide.
Kitty vs. pot vs. rake
Three terms that all involve chips leaving a player’s control, but they are very different:
| Term | Whose money | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Pot | Contested each hand | Won by the hand’s winner |
| Kitty | Shared by the table | Group expenses (cards, food) |
| Rake | Taken by the house | Casino’s fee and profit |
The pot moves to a winner every hand. The kitty is built up communally and spent on the players themselves. The rake is the professional cousin — a fee skimmed by a casino or cardroom that goes to the house, not back to the table.
A worked example
Eight friends run a weekly $20 home game. They agree to drop $1 into a jar every time someone wins a pot larger than $30. Over an evening of 40 such pots, the jar collects $40.
That jar is the kitty. At the end of the night the group uses it to buy two new decks and a round of pizza, with the leftover carried to next week. Notice what happened: the $40 never belonged to any one winner — it was skimmed from the flow of pots into a shared fund and spent on the table’s needs. That communal purpose is exactly what separates a kitty from an ordinary pot.
The kitty in other card games
Poker isn’t the only place the word lives, and knowing the wider usage helps you avoid confusion at a mixed table. In several classic card games, “kitty” means something slightly different:
- Rummy and canasta — the kitty can refer to the undealt stock or a shared pool of cards or points.
- Whist and euchre — the kitty is sometimes a set of cards left face down that the winning bidder may exchange.
- General gambling slang — “the kitty” has broadened to mean any communal pool of money, which is why you hear it far outside the card room, from office lottery pools to shared holiday funds.
In poker specifically, the meaning stays anchored to its original sense: a fund of chips reserved for the group’s expenses. If someone at a home game says “add to the kitty,” they mean the shared jar, not the pot you’re currently contesting.
Kitty etiquette in home games
Because the kitty is communal, a little courtesy keeps it fair. Agree up front on how much is skimmed and from which pots, so no one feels nickel-and-dimed mid-session. Keep the fund visible — a clear jar on the table beats chips in a pocket. And settle what happens to any leftover: rolling it into next week’s game or splitting it back is fine, as long as everyone knows the rule before the cards are dealt. Transparency is what keeps the kitty a friendly tradition rather than a source of table arguments.
Related terms
The kitty belongs to poker’s family of “money set aside” terms, closely tied to the rake that replaced it in commercial games. It is also a classic bit of the old-school poker slang that grew out of home games. To see how betting builds the pots a kitty is skimmed from, visit the Texas Hold’em hub, and browse the full poker glossary for more.
Frequently asked
What is the kitty in poker?
The kitty is a shared fund of chips set aside from pots during a home or club game. Traditionally it paid for a new deck of cards, food, drinks, and other table expenses, so it belongs to the group rather than to any one player.
Where does the word kitty come from?
The term likely comes from 'kit,' a collection of shared items or a common pool. In card games it came to mean the communal pot of chips or money reserved for group expenses, distinct from the pot being fought over each hand.
Is the kitty the same as the pot?
No. The pot is the money contested and won on a single hand. The kitty is a separate, shared fund skimmed over many hands for group costs. Winning a hand takes the pot; the kitty stays set aside for the table.
Is the kitty the same as the rake?
They are cousins. Both skim chips from play, but the kitty is an informal, communal fund in home or club games spent on the players' own expenses, while the rake is the house's fee taken by a casino or cardroom as profit.