--- title: "88 vs 77: preflop equity" url: "https://georgelipoker.com/equity/88-vs-77.md" canonical_url: "https://georgelipoker.com/equity/88-vs-77" last_updated: "2026-10-23" type: "reference" summary: "88 is a big favorite over 77 before the flop: 81.82% to 18.18% equity, counted exactly over every board, with the split by flop type and suit." related: ["https://georgelipoker.com/equity/88-vs-aqs.md", "https://georgelipoker.com/equity/88-vs-ajs.md", "https://georgelipoker.com/equity/aks-vs-77.md"] --- # 88 vs 77: preflop equity 88 is a big favorite over 77 before the flop: 81.82% to 18.18% equity, counted exactly over every board, with the split by flop type and suit. Counting every board, the equity split is 81.82% for 88 and 18.18% for 77, so 88 leads by 63.64 points. ## 88 against 77: the numbers **Exact preflop results for 88 against 77, in percent** | 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. **Boards behind the percentages: 61,642,944 counted in all** | 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. **88 against 77 read as odds** | 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. **88 against 77 by flop texture, in percent** | 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. **88 and 77 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 | | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | | 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. **88 against 77 by suit overlap, in percent** | 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. - [Open 8s8h against 7d7c in the equity calculator](https://georgelipoker.com/tools/equity-calculator.md#p1=8s8h&p2=7d7c) - [88 combos](https://georgelipoker.com/combos/88.md) - [77 combos](https://georgelipoker.com/combos/77.md) - [88 vs AQs](https://georgelipoker.com/equity/88-vs-aqs.md) - [88 vs AJs](https://georgelipoker.com/equity/88-vs-ajs.md) - [AKs vs 77](https://georgelipoker.com/equity/aks-vs-77.md) - [All hand matchups](https://georgelipoker.com/equity.md) ## 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. ## Related - [88 vs AQs: preflop equity](https://georgelipoker.com/equity/88-vs-aqs.md) - [88 vs AJs: preflop equity](https://georgelipoker.com/equity/88-vs-ajs.md) - [AKs vs 77: preflop equity](https://georgelipoker.com/equity/aks-vs-77.md)