88 vs AK
A pair of eights against ace-king, all in before the flop. The pair still leads, by a little less than the bigger pairs do.
Also written as eights vs ace-king. Suitedness variants: 88 vs AKs and 88 vs AKo.
The numbers
88
a pair of eights
54.5%
equity
AK
ace-king
45.5%
equity
| Outcome | Share of boards |
|---|---|
| 88 wins | 54.3% |
| AK wins | 45.3% |
| Split pot | 0.4% |
Exact, not simulated. 88 means a pair of eights and AK means ace-king: 96 legal ways to deal the two hands, and every one of the 1,712,304 possible five-card boards dealt for each — 164,381,184 board-and-hand combinations in total, each one scored by the same evaluator the calculator uses. Combinations that are the same hand with the suits renamed were counted once and weighted by how many they stand for: 6 distinct suit patterns stand in for all 96, which is the same answer for 16 times less work.
Why it comes out this way
The pair of eights is the only made hand right now, but both of ace-king's cards are higher than it. Six cards in the deck — the aces and the kings — pair ace-king up and put it in front.
That is why this is close rather than one-sided: the pair of eights wins 54.3%, ace-king wins 45.3%. The pair of eights is ahead on every board that misses those six cards, which is most of them, but it is only ever one card from losing the lead.
Suitedness is part of the answer: against the pair of eights, AKs wins 47.3% and AKo wins 44.7%. The AK wins figure in the table is the average of both, weighted the way they actually come out of a deck — one suited combination for every three offsuit.
The pot is split 0.4% of the time.
Open it in the calculator
The link below deals one typical version of this matchup — 8of spades8of hearts against Aof spadesKof diamonds — into the calculator, with both hands set and the board empty. Add community cards one at a time to watch the equity move, or change a card to see how much the suits are worth.