---
title: "87s vs 43s: preflop equity"
url: "https://georgelipoker.com/equity/87s-vs-43s.md"
canonical_url: "https://georgelipoker.com/equity/87s-vs-43s"
last_updated: "2026-10-23"
type: "reference"
summary: "87s is a big favorite over 43s before the flop: 63.96% to 36.04% equity, counted exactly over every board, with the split by flop type and suit."
related: ["https://georgelipoker.com/equity/86s-vs-43s.md", "https://georgelipoker.com/equity/87s-vs-53s.md", "https://georgelipoker.com/equity/97s-vs-43s.md"]
---

# 87s vs 43s: preflop equity

87s is a big favorite over 43s before the flop: 63.96% to 36.04% equity, counted exactly over every board, with the split by flop type and suit.

The exact count puts 87s at 63.96% and 43s at 36.04% when the two hands see all five board cards.

## 87s against 43s: the numbers

**Exact preflop results for 87s against 43s, in percent**

| Hand | Wins | Ties | Loses | Equity |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 87s | 61.822 | 4.272 | 33.906 | 63.958 |
| 43s | 33.906 | 4.272 | 61.822 | 36.042 |

Each side holds one of the suited hands: 87s and 43s. Neither hand shares a rank with the other, so this is a contest of high cards, connection and suits.

That is a modest edge, the kind that shows up over many hands and is easy to miss in one. 4.27% of boards are ties, so the equity of each hand is its win rate plus half of that.

87s ranks number 100 of 169 starting hands, and 43s ranks number 150, by equity against a random hand.

**Boards behind the percentages: 27,396,864 counted in all**

| Hand | Boards won, about | Boards tied, about | Boards lost, about |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 87s | 16,937,000 | 1,170,000 | 9,289,000 |
| 43s | 9,289,000 | 1,170,000 | 16,937,000 |

Exact total: 16 deals times 1,712,304 boards. The other three counts come from the five-decimal percentages and are rounded to the nearest thousand, so read them as approximate.

**87s against 43s read as odds**

| Hand | Equity as odds (to 1) | Wins one deal in | Loses one deal in | Pot odds needed to call (to 1) |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 87s | 1.775 | 1.618 | 2.949 | 0.564 |
| 43s | 0.564 | 2.949 | 1.618 | 1.775 |

In the last column, a pot-to-call ratio at or above the figure makes a call break even or better at this equity.

## Who is ahead on which flops

Split by what the flop looks like, 87s peaks at 65.13% on rainbow flops topped by a ten or better and bottoms out at 61.54% on monotone flops. 87s stays ahead on all five textures.

**87s against 43s by flop texture, in percent**

| Flop | Share of flops | 87s wins | Ties | 43s wins | 87s equity |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Rainbow, ten or higher | 25.844 | 63.321 | 3.609 | 33.070 | 65.125 |
| Rainbow, nine or lower | 5.065 | 64.671 | 0.646 | 34.683 | 64.994 |
| Two-tone | 46.727 | 62.558 | 2.768 | 34.674 | 63.942 |
| Monotone | 5.273 | 58.909 | 5.271 | 35.820 | 61.544 |
| Paired | 17.091 | 57.595 | 10.156 | 32.249 | 62.673 |

Read the flop types this way: rainbow has three suits, two-tone has two cards of one suit, monotone has three, and paired repeats a rank.

## Compared with a random hand

Against one random hand instead, 87s holds 47.94% and 43s holds 38.64%. Facing each other changes that by +16.02 points for 87s and -2.60 points for 43s.

**87s and 43s here compared with each against a random hand, in percent**

| Case | Equity here | Against a random hand | Change in points | Times the random-hand equity |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 87s, all flops | 63.958 | 47.936 | +16.022 | 1.33424 |
| 87s, rainbow, ten or higher | 65.125 | 47.936 | +17.189 | 1.35858 |
| 87s, rainbow, nine or lower | 64.994 | 47.936 | +17.058 | 1.35585 |
| 87s, two-tone | 63.942 | 47.936 | +16.006 | 1.33390 |
| 87s, monotone | 61.544 | 47.936 | +13.608 | 1.28388 |
| 87s, paired | 62.673 | 47.936 | +14.737 | 1.30743 |
| 43s, all flops | 36.042 | 38.642 | -2.600 | 0.93272 |
| 43s, rainbow, ten or higher | 34.875 | 38.642 | -3.767 | 0.90252 |
| 43s, rainbow, nine or lower | 35.006 | 38.642 | -3.636 | 0.90591 |
| 43s, two-tone | 36.058 | 38.642 | -2.584 | 0.93313 |
| 43s, monotone | 38.456 | 38.642 | -0.186 | 0.99519 |
| 43s, paired | 37.327 | 38.642 | -1.315 | 0.96597 |

## Does a shared suit matter?

Of the deals of this matchup, 4 share a suit (87s at 66.44%) and 12 do not (63.13%). 87s does better with a shared suit, by 3.31 points.

**87s against 43s by suit overlap, in percent**

| Deals | Specific deals | Share of deals | 87s wins | Ties | 43s wins | 87s equity |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Share a suit | 4 | 25.00 | 64.149 | 4.587 | 31.264 | 66.443 |
| No shared suit | 12 | 75.00 | 61.046 | 4.167 | 34.787 | 63.130 |

## How often this matchup comes up

How often does it happen? 16 of the 1,624,350 ordered deals (0.0010%) are 87s against 43s, and 32 (0.0020%) if either hand may sit in either seat.

## A worked example

Take a $200 pot built from $100 each. 87s' equity of 63.96% is worth $127.92, a $27.92 edge, and 43s' 36.04% is worth $72.08, which is $27.92 under its stake.

Out of 1,000 deals you should see around 618 outright wins for 87s, 339 for 43s, and 43 split pots.

## The same matchup from the other side

The mirror image, 43s against 87s, is 36.04% to 63.96%, and its address redirects to this page.

## Keep exploring

Try 8s7s against 4h3h in the calculator: the hands share no suit, and every card can be changed. The links after it are the closest matchups in the ranking.

- [Open 8s7s against 4h3h in the equity calculator](https://georgelipoker.com/tools/equity-calculator.md#p1=8s7s&p2=4h3h)
- [87s combos](https://georgelipoker.com/combos/87s.md)
- [43s combos](https://georgelipoker.com/combos/43s.md)
- [86s vs 43s](https://georgelipoker.com/equity/86s-vs-43s.md)
- [87s vs 53s](https://georgelipoker.com/equity/87s-vs-53s.md)
- [97s vs 43s](https://georgelipoker.com/equity/97s-vs-43s.md)
- [All hand matchups](https://georgelipoker.com/equity.md)

## How this was computed

We counted every case. Each suit pattern of the 16 specific 87s against 43s deals meets all 1,712,304 boards, and the better five-card hand wins; a split pot is half a win each. The flop table reads each board under all ten of its three-card flops.

Source: our own exact count from the GeorgeLiPoker poker math library. No outside data is used.

## Related

- [86s vs 43s: preflop equity](https://georgelipoker.com/equity/86s-vs-43s.md)
- [87s vs 53s: preflop equity](https://georgelipoker.com/equity/87s-vs-53s.md)
- [97s vs 43s: preflop equity](https://georgelipoker.com/equity/97s-vs-43s.md)