88
83.27%
Wins 81.52%, ties 3.50%
86s
16.73%
Wins 14.98%, ties 3.50%
88 against 86s: the numbers
| Hand | Wins | Ties | Loses | Equity |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 88 | 81.521 | 3.500 | 14.979 | 83.271 |
| 86s | 14.979 | 3.500 | 81.521 | 16.729 |
88 and 86s are a pocket pair and a suited hand, in that order. The pair already holds one of the other hand's ranks, and that overlap cuts down the cards the other hand can pair with.
88 is a big favorite here before anyone sees a flop. Split pots make up 3.50% of the boards, and both equity figures count them as half a win each.
88 ranks number 7 of 169 starting hands, and 86s ranks number 110, by equity against a random hand.
| Hand | Boards won, about | Boards tied, about | Boards lost, about |
|---|---|---|---|
| 88 | 16,751,000 | 719,000 | 3,078,000 |
| 86s | 3,078,000 | 719,000 | 16,751,000 |
Exact total: 12 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 | 4.978 | 1.227 | 6.676 | 0.201 |
| 86s | 0.201 | 6.676 | 1.227 | 4.978 |
The last column is the break-even price: the pot odds a call needs to offer, as a ratio of pot to call.
Who is ahead on which flops
The flop changes the picture. 88 does best on rainbow flops topped by a ten or better, at 88.30%, and worst on monotone flops, at 74.67%. 88 stays ahead on all five textures.
| Flop | Share of flops | 88 wins | Ties | 86s wins | 88 equity |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rainbow, ten or higher | 25.786 | 86.849 | 2.907 | 10.244 | 88.302 |
| Rainbow, nine or lower | 4.995 | 74.629 | 4.900 | 20.471 | 77.079 |
| Two-tone | 46.236 | 80.430 | 2.976 | 16.594 | 81.918 |
| Monotone | 5.152 | 72.891 | 3.548 | 23.561 | 74.665 |
| Paired | 17.831 | 81.070 | 5.307 | 13.623 | 83.723 |
A rainbow flop shows three suits, a two-tone flop repeats one suit, a monotone flop is a single suit, and a paired flop repeats a rank.
Compared with a random hand
The table below sets each hand against its own random-hand baseline: a change of +14.11 points for 88, from 69.16%, and -29.51 for 86s, from 46.24%.
| Case | Equity here | Against a random hand | Change in points | Times the random-hand equity |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 88, all flops | 83.271 | 69.163 | +14.108 | 1.20398 |
| 88, rainbow, ten or higher | 88.302 | 69.163 | +19.139 | 1.27672 |
| 88, rainbow, nine or lower | 77.079 | 69.163 | +7.916 | 1.11445 |
| 88, two-tone | 81.918 | 69.163 | +12.755 | 1.18442 |
| 88, monotone | 74.665 | 69.163 | +5.502 | 1.07955 |
| 88, paired | 83.723 | 69.163 | +14.560 | 1.21052 |
| 86s, all flops | 16.729 | 46.243 | -29.514 | 0.36176 |
| 86s, rainbow, ten or higher | 11.698 | 46.243 | -34.545 | 0.25297 |
| 86s, rainbow, nine or lower | 22.921 | 46.243 | -23.322 | 0.49566 |
| 86s, two-tone | 18.082 | 46.243 | -28.161 | 0.39102 |
| 86s, monotone | 25.335 | 46.243 | -20.908 | 0.54787 |
| 86s, paired | 16.277 | 46.243 | -29.966 | 0.35199 |
Does a shared suit matter?
Every legal deal of 88 against 86s leaves the hands with no suit in common, so the suit split does not apply here.
| Deals | Specific deals | Share of deals | 88 wins | Ties | 86s wins | 88 equity |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Share a suit | 0 | 0.00 | not possible | not possible | not possible | not possible |
| No shared suit | 12 | 100.00 | 81.521 | 3.500 | 14.979 | 83.271 |
How often this matchup comes up
You will meet this exact matchup 0.0015% of the time in a random heads-up deal: 24 of 1,624,350, counting either seat order.
A worked example
A $100 all-in from each player makes a $200 pot, and the exact equity says 88 gets $166.54 of it on average and 86s gets $33.46.
Out of 1,000 deals you should see around 815 outright wins for 88, 150 for 86s, and 35 split pots.
The same matchup from the other side
86s against 88 adds nothing new: it is 16.73% for 86s and 83.27% for 88, the same figures reversed.
Keep exploring
The calculator link fills in 8s8h against 8d6d, a deal where the two hands share no suit. Change any card to test your own hand. The neighboring matchups below swap one of the two hands for one of similar strength.
How this was computed
The page is built from a full enumeration: 1,712,304 boards, every suit pattern of the 12 specific deals, both seven-card hands evaluated. A tie is worth half a win to each hand, and a board is tallied under each of its ten possible flops for the texture rows.
Source: our own exact count from the GeorgeLiPoker poker math library. No outside data is used.
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