AK vs KQ
Ace-king against king-queen, all in before the flop. They share the king, and the ace on top makes this one-sided.
Also written as ace-king vs king-queen. Suitedness variants: AKs vs KQs, AKs vs KQo, AKo vs KQs and AKo vs KQo.
The numbers
AK
ace-king
73.9%
equity
KQ
king-queen
26.1%
equity
| Outcome | Share of boards |
|---|---|
| AK wins | 73.3% |
| KQ wins | 25.5% |
| Split pot | 1.2% |
Exact, not simulated. AK means ace-king and KQ means king-queen: 192 legal ways to deal the two hands, and every one of the 1,712,304 possible five-card boards dealt for each — 328,762,368 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: 10 distinct suit patterns stand in for all 192, which is the same answer for 19 times less work.
Why it comes out this way
Both hands hold a king, and ace-king also holds the ace — the one card that beats everything king-queen can pair. King-queen needs a queen on the board without an ace, or a straight or a flush. The hands split the pot on 1.2% of boards.
Ace-king wins 73.3% and king-queen wins 25.5%. Suitedness is part of the answer: against king-queen, AKs wins 74.0% and AKo wins 73.1%. 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.
Open it in the calculator
The link below deals one typical version of this matchup — Aof spadesKof spades against Kof heartsQof 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.