88
81.82%
Wins 81.35%, ties 0.94%
77
18.18%
Wins 17.71%, ties 0.94%
88 against 77: the numbers
| Hand | Wins | Ties | Loses | Equity |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 88 | 81.351 | 0.939 | 17.710 | 81.821 |
| 77 | 17.710 | 0.939 | 81.351 | 18.179 |
Both hands are pocket pairs: 88 and 77. A pair against a smaller pair is the classic crush: the smaller pair needs one of its two remaining cards to make a set.
That is a heavy lead: 77 needs the board to help it on most runouts and still falls behind far more often than not. 0.94% of boards are ties, so the equity of each hand is its win rate plus half of that.
In the ranking of all 169 starting hands, 88 is number 7 and 77 is number 9.
| Hand | Boards won, about | Boards tied, about | Boards lost, about |
|---|---|---|---|
| 88 | 50,147,000 | 579,000 | 10,917,000 |
| 77 | 10,917,000 | 579,000 | 50,147,000 |
Exact total: 36 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.
| Hand | Equity as odds (to 1) | Wins one deal in | Loses one deal in | Pot odds needed to call (to 1) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 88 | 4.501 | 1.229 | 5.647 | 0.222 |
| 77 | 0.222 | 5.647 | 1.229 | 4.501 |
The final column gives the least the pot must offer for each unit called for a call to break even at this equity.
Who is ahead on which flops
Split by what the flop looks like, 88 peaks at 85.88% on paired flops and bottoms out at 73.98% on low rainbow flops (nine high or lower). 88 stays ahead on all five textures.
| Flop | Share of flops | 88 wins | Ties | 77 wins | 88 equity |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rainbow, ten or higher | 25.844 | 82.850 | 0.594 | 16.556 | 83.147 |
| Rainbow, nine or lower | 5.065 | 73.754 | 0.454 | 25.792 | 73.981 |
| Two-tone | 46.363 | 80.745 | 0.559 | 18.696 | 81.025 |
| Monotone | 5.152 | 75.200 | 1.971 | 22.829 | 76.186 |
| Paired | 17.576 | 84.736 | 2.288 | 12.976 | 85.880 |
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
A random hand would give 88 69.16% and 77 66.24%. Against each other the change is +12.66 points for 88 and -48.06 for 77.
| Case | Equity here | Against a random hand | Change in points | Times the random-hand equity |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 88, all flops | 81.821 | 69.163 | +12.658 | 1.18302 |
| 88, rainbow, ten or higher | 83.147 | 69.163 | +13.984 | 1.20219 |
| 88, rainbow, nine or lower | 73.981 | 69.163 | +4.818 | 1.06966 |
| 88, two-tone | 81.025 | 69.163 | +11.862 | 1.17151 |
| 88, monotone | 76.186 | 69.163 | +7.023 | 1.10154 |
| 88, paired | 85.880 | 69.163 | +16.717 | 1.24170 |
| 77, all flops | 18.179 | 66.236 | -48.057 | 0.27446 |
| 77, rainbow, ten or higher | 16.853 | 66.236 | -49.383 | 0.25444 |
| 77, rainbow, nine or lower | 26.019 | 66.236 | -40.217 | 0.39282 |
| 77, two-tone | 18.975 | 66.236 | -47.261 | 0.28648 |
| 77, monotone | 23.814 | 66.236 | -42.422 | 0.35953 |
| 77, paired | 14.120 | 66.236 | -52.116 | 0.21318 |
Does a shared suit matter?
Two kinds of deal exist here. In 30 of them the hands share a suit and 88 holds 81.96%. In 6 they do not, and it holds 81.13%. 88 does better with a shared suit, by 0.83 points.
| Deals | Specific deals | Share of deals | 88 wins | Ties | 77 wins | 88 equity |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Share a suit | 30 | 83.33 | 81.481 | 0.955 | 17.564 | 81.959 |
| No shared suit | 6 | 16.67 | 80.699 | 0.861 | 18.440 | 81.129 |
How often this matchup comes up
You will meet this exact matchup 0.0044% of the time in a random heads-up deal: 72 of 1,624,350, counting either seat order.
A worked example
Put $100 each into a $200 pot and deal every board once: 88 averages $163.64 back, ahead of its $100 by $63.64, while 77 averages $36.36, short of its $100 by $63.64.
Think in thousands: about 814 of 1,000 go to 88, about 177 go to 77, and about 9 are chopped.
The same matchup from the other side
If you came looking for 77 against 88, the numbers are the same with the hands swapped: 18.18% and 81.82%.
Keep exploring
8s8h against 7d7c is a ready-made deal for the calculator, with no suit in common between the hands. The neighboring matchups below replace one hand with another of similar strength.
How this was computed
We counted every case. Each suit pattern of the 36 specific 88 against 77 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.
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