99 vs 54s: preflop equity

If 99 and 54s get all the chips in before the flop, 99 owns 78.10% of the pot in the long run and 54s owns 21.90%.

99

78.10%

Wins 77.75%, ties 0.70%

54s

21.90%

Wins 21.55%, ties 0.70%

Equity counts a tie as half a win. Exact over every board.

99 against 54s: the numbers

Exact preflop results for 99 against 54s, in percent
HandWinsTiesLosesEquity
9977.7470.70221.55178.098
54s21.5510.70277.74721.902

99 is a pocket pair and 54s is a suited hand. Here a pair faces two cards that are both smaller, so the other hand needs to pair up and still be behind.

A lead of 56.20 points is large but not decisive: 54s still takes about 216 of every 1,000 deals. 0.70% of boards are ties, so the equity of each hand is its win rate plus half of that.

Place 6 of 169 belongs to 99 and place 136 belongs to 54s in the ranking against a random hand.

Boards behind the percentages: 41,095,296 counted in all
HandBoards won, aboutBoards tied, aboutBoards lost, about
9931,950,000288,0008,856,000
54s8,856,000288,00031,950,000

The total is exact: 24 specific deals times 1,712,304 boards. The three counts are approximate, worked out from the percentages to five decimals and rounded to the nearest thousand.

99 against 54s read as odds
HandEquity as odds (to 1)Wins one deal inLoses one deal inPot odds needed to call (to 1)
993.5661.2864.6400.280
54s0.2804.6401.2863.566

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, 99 peaks at 82.39% on rainbow flops topped by a ten or better and bottoms out at 65.56% on low rainbow flops (nine high or lower). 99 stays ahead on all five textures, but the swing between them is large, so how the flop looks matters a great deal.

99 against 54s by flop texture, in percent
FlopShare of flops99 winsTies54s wins99 equity
Rainbow, ten or higher25.84482.1930.39917.40882.393
Rainbow, nine or lower5.06565.1420.83834.02065.561
Two-tone46.54576.0340.44323.52376.255
Monotone5.21271.8332.57525.59273.120
Paired17.33481.1801.25017.57081.805

Flop types: rainbow means three different suits, two-tone means one suit twice, monotone means one suit three times, paired means a repeated rank.

Compared with a random hand

Start from the random-hand figures, 72.06% for 99 and 41.45% for 54s. This opponent changes them by +6.04 and -19.55 points.

99 and 54s here compared with each against a random hand, in percent
CaseEquity hereAgainst a random handChange in pointsTimes the random-hand equity
99, all flops78.09872.057+6.0411.08384
99, rainbow, ten or higher82.39372.057+10.3361.14344
99, rainbow, nine or lower65.56172.057-6.4960.90985
99, two-tone76.25572.057+4.1981.05826
99, monotone73.12072.057+1.0631.01475
99, paired81.80572.057+9.7481.13528
54s, all flops21.90241.453-19.5510.52836
54s, rainbow, ten or higher17.60741.453-23.8460.42475
54s, rainbow, nine or lower34.43941.453-7.0140.83080
54s, two-tone23.74541.453-17.7080.57282
54s, monotone26.88041.453-14.5730.64845
54s, paired18.19541.453-23.2580.43893

Does a shared suit matter?

Does suit overlap move the numbers? 99 has 78.66% when the hands share a suit and 77.54% when they do not. 99 does better with a shared suit, by 1.12 points.

99 against 54s by suit overlap, in percent
DealsSpecific dealsShare of deals99 winsTies54s wins99 equity
Share a suit1250.0078.2890.74520.96678.662
No shared suit1250.0077.2050.65922.13677.535

How often this matchup comes up

How often does it happen? 24 of the 1,624,350 ordered deals (0.0015%) are 99 against 54s, and 48 (0.0030%) if either hand may sit in either seat.

A worked example

Take a $200 pot built from $100 each. 99's equity of 78.10% is worth $156.20, a $56.20 edge, and 54s' 21.90% is worth $43.80, which is $56.20 under its stake.

Think in thousands: about 777 of 1,000 go to 99, about 216 go to 54s, and about 7 are chopped.

The same matchup from the other side

54s against 99 adds nothing new: it is 21.90% for 54s and 78.10% for 99, the same figures reversed.

Open the calculator with 9s9h against 5d4d already entered, a deal with no shared suit, and change any card to try your own hand. The matchups after it each swap one hand for a nearby one in the ranking.

How this was computed

Method: exact enumeration. The 24 specific deals are grouped by suit pattern, each is run against all 1,712,304 boards, and both seven-card hands are scored. Equity adds half of every tie, and flop textures are tallied over the ten flops inside each board.

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

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