---
title: "97s vs 86s: preflop equity"
url: "https://georgelipoker.com/equity/97s-vs-86s.md"
canonical_url: "https://georgelipoker.com/equity/97s-vs-86s"
last_updated: "2026-10-23"
type: "reference"
summary: "97s is a big favorite over 86s before the flop: 61.85% to 38.15% equity, counted exactly over every board, with the split by flop type and suit."
related: ["https://georgelipoker.com/equity/97s-vs-76s.md", "https://georgelipoker.com/equity/97s-vs-75s.md", "https://georgelipoker.com/equity/87s-vs-86s.md"]
---

# 97s vs 86s: preflop equity

97s is a big favorite over 86s before the flop: 61.85% to 38.15% equity, counted exactly over every board, with the split by flop type and suit.

If 97s and 86s get all the chips in before the flop, 97s owns 61.85% of the pot in the long run and 86s owns 38.15%.

## 97s against 86s: the numbers

**Exact preflop results for 97s against 86s, in percent**

| Hand | Wins | Ties | Loses | Equity |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 97s | 60.411 | 2.887 | 36.702 | 61.854 |
| 86s | 36.702 | 2.887 | 60.411 | 38.146 |

Here suited hands face each other, 97s on one side and 86s on the other. Neither hand shares a rank with the other, so this is a contest of high cards, connection and suits.

The lead is steady rather than large, and the flop still has plenty of say in who wins. A split pot comes up on 2.89% of boards, so the wins and the equity differ by half of that.

For context, 97s sits at number 94 of 169 starting hands and 86s at number 110 when each is run against a random hand.

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

| Hand | Boards won, about | Boards tied, about | Boards lost, about |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 97s | 16,551,000 | 791,000 | 10,055,000 |
| 86s | 10,055,000 | 791,000 | 16,551,000 |

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.

**97s against 86s read as odds**

| Hand | Equity as odds (to 1) | Wins one deal in | Loses one deal in | Pot odds needed to call (to 1) |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 97s | 1.622 | 1.655 | 2.725 | 0.617 |
| 86s | 0.617 | 2.725 | 1.655 | 1.622 |

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

Split by what the flop looks like, 97s peaks at 63.92% on rainbow flops topped by a ten or better and bottoms out at 55.35% on low rainbow flops (nine high or lower). 97s stays ahead on all five textures.

**97s against 86s by flop texture, in percent**

| Flop | Share of flops | 97s wins | Ties | 86s wins | 97s equity |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Rainbow, ten or higher | 25.844 | 62.801 | 2.229 | 34.970 | 63.915 |
| Rainbow, nine or lower | 5.065 | 55.254 | 0.191 | 44.555 | 55.349 |
| Two-tone | 46.727 | 60.602 | 1.696 | 37.702 | 61.450 |
| Monotone | 5.273 | 56.921 | 4.361 | 38.718 | 59.102 |
| Paired | 17.091 | 58.878 | 7.482 | 33.640 | 62.619 |

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

A random hand would give 97s 49.12% and 86s 46.24%. Against each other the change is +12.73 points for 97s and -8.09 for 86s.

**97s and 86s 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 |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 97s, all flops | 61.854 | 49.118 | +12.736 | 1.25929 |
| 97s, rainbow, ten or higher | 63.915 | 49.118 | +14.797 | 1.30125 |
| 97s, rainbow, nine or lower | 55.349 | 49.118 | +6.231 | 1.12686 |
| 97s, two-tone | 61.450 | 49.118 | +12.332 | 1.25107 |
| 97s, monotone | 59.102 | 49.118 | +9.984 | 1.20327 |
| 97s, paired | 62.619 | 49.118 | +13.501 | 1.27487 |
| 86s, all flops | 38.146 | 46.243 | -8.097 | 0.82490 |
| 86s, rainbow, ten or higher | 36.085 | 46.243 | -10.158 | 0.78033 |
| 86s, rainbow, nine or lower | 44.651 | 46.243 | -1.592 | 0.96557 |
| 86s, two-tone | 38.550 | 46.243 | -7.693 | 0.83364 |
| 86s, monotone | 40.898 | 46.243 | -5.345 | 0.88441 |
| 86s, paired | 37.381 | 46.243 | -8.862 | 0.80836 |

## Does a shared suit matter?

The suit split reads 64.24% for 97s with a shared suit and 61.06% without one. 97s does better with a shared suit, by 3.18 points.

**97s against 86s by suit overlap, in percent**

| Deals | Specific deals | Share of deals | 97s wins | Ties | 86s wins | 97s equity |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Share a suit | 4 | 25.00 | 62.683 | 3.107 | 34.210 | 64.237 |
| No shared suit | 12 | 75.00 | 59.653 | 2.814 | 37.533 | 61.060 |

## How often this matchup comes up

Out of 1,624,350 ways to deal two seats two cards each, 16 are 97s in one seat and 86s in the other (0.0010%); with the seats swapped too, 32 (0.0020%).

## A worked example

To see what the equity is worth, imagine $100 each in a $200 pot. 97s is worth $123.70 on average (+$23.70); 86s is worth $76.30 (-$23.70).

Out of 1,000 deals you should see around 604 outright wins for 97s, 367 for 86s, and 29 split pots.

## The same matchup from the other side

The reversed view, 86s against 97s, shows 38.15% for 86s and 61.85% for 97s. It is the same count, so it redirects here.

## Keep exploring

9s7s against 8h6h 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 9s7s against 8h6h in the equity calculator](https://georgelipoker.com/tools/equity-calculator.md#p1=9s7s&p2=8h6h)
- [97s combos](https://georgelipoker.com/combos/97s.md)
- [86s combos](https://georgelipoker.com/combos/86s.md)
- [97s vs 76s](https://georgelipoker.com/equity/97s-vs-76s.md)
- [97s vs 75s](https://georgelipoker.com/equity/97s-vs-75s.md)
- [87s vs 86s](https://georgelipoker.com/equity/87s-vs-86s.md)
- [All hand matchups](https://georgelipoker.com/equity.md)

## How this was computed

We counted every case. Each suit pattern of the 16 specific 97s against 86s 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

- [97s vs 76s: preflop equity](https://georgelipoker.com/equity/97s-vs-76s.md)
- [97s vs 75s: preflop equity](https://georgelipoker.com/equity/97s-vs-75s.md)
- [87s vs 86s: preflop equity](https://georgelipoker.com/equity/87s-vs-86s.md)