Classic preflop matchups
Ten hand-against-hand spots every player argues about, each one settled by dealing every board that can possibly fall.
What these pages are
Ten preflop matchups that come up again and again, each worked out over every board that can possibly fall. No simulation and no sampling: for each pair of hands the engine dealt all 1,712,304 five-card boards and compared the two hands on every one of them.
The percentages are equity — your share of the pot in the long run, counting a split pot as half. Win, split and loss are listed separately on each page, because they are three different things and a split is not a win.
The ten matchups
| Matchup | First hand | Second hand | Split | Why it is interesting |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AA vs KK | 81.9% | 18.1% | 0.5% | The biggest preflop favourite you will ever hold against a hand nobody folds. |
| AK vs QQ | 43.9% | 56.1% | 0.4% | The coin flip that decides most tournaments: two big cards against a made pair. |
| AK vs 22 | 48.0% | 52.0% | 0.6% | Two overcards against the smallest pair in the deck — closer than it looks. |
| AKs vs AKo | 52.5% | 47.5% | 90.7% | The same two ranks on both sides. All that is left is the suit — and the split pot. |
| QQ vs AKo | 56.8% | 43.2% | 0.4% | A pair of queens is ahead right now. Staying ahead is the hard part. |
| JJ vs AQs | 54.1% | 45.9% | 0.4% | A middle pair against two bigger cards that can also make a flush. |
| 77 vs AKo | 55.0% | 45.0% | 0.4% | The classic race: a small pair is a tiny favourite over ace-king. |
| T9s vs AA | 22.2% | 77.8% | 0.4% | Suited connectors against aces — how much the straights and flushes are really worth. |
| KQs vs AJo | 43.7% | 56.3% | 0.5% | Two unpaired hands, one ace between them, one flush draw between them. |
| 33 vs 22 | 80.4% | 19.6% | 5.0% | The smallest possible pair-over-pair. One rank of difference, and it still decides it. |
How a hand class is counted
“A pair of aces” is not one hand, it is six — there are six ways to pick two aces out of four. Every page here averages over all of them, and over all the ways the opposing hand can be dealt, weighted by how often each combination actually comes out of a deck. That matters, because the suits genuinely change the answer — a page that shows one arbitrary deal of aces against kings is showing you a number that only applies to that deal.