[Brocktoon]

Scooping is quite obviously more than twice as profitable as splitting.

This can easily be shown with a hypothetical example where a player bets $X on the river into an empty pot. If the pot is heads up then the player who is calling the $X bet clearly makes ZERO profit if he wins half of the pot yet makes $X in profit when he wins. Here scooping is infinitely more profitable than splitting.

It is true that in the above example you recieve $X from the pot when you split and receive $2X for a scoop, which would seem to suggest that the split is indeed worth half of a scoop. However, when we subtract our investment (call) of $X from what we get from the pot we are only left with more than we started when we scoop. The split is worth $0 to us meaning that calling and folding when we have a definite split are equal in value.

The bigger the pot is in relation to the last bet called the closer splitting is to being exactly half as profitable as scooping, though it never totally gets there. If your lone opponent goes all-in for $1000 dollars into a $1 pot then splitting gets you a pack of gum while scooping might pay your rent for the month. If the same guy goes all in for $1 into a $1000 pot then splitting is just about exactly half as good as scooping and you need to call with any shot of getting 1/2 the pot.

This is all intuitive and we all understand this. So why are we arguing?