99 vs A2s: preflop equity

Counting every board, the equity split is 66.92% for 99 and 33.08% for A2s, so 99 leads by 33.84 points.

99

66.92%

Wins 66.70%, ties 0.44%

A2s

33.08%

Wins 32.86%, ties 0.44%

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

99 against A2s: the numbers

Exact preflop results for 99 against A2s, in percent
HandWinsTiesLosesEquity
9966.7030.43832.85966.922
A2s32.8590.43866.70333.078

The first hand is a pocket pair; the second is a suited hand. The pair sits between the other hand's two cards: one is higher and one is lower, so the pair is exposed to the higher card.

A lead of 33.84 points is large but not decisive: A2s still takes about 329 of every 1,000 deals. A split pot comes up on 0.44% of boards, so the wins and the equity differ by half of that.

99 ranks number 6 of 169 starting hands, and A2s ranks number 46, by equity against a random hand.

Boards behind the percentages: 41,095,296 counted in all
HandBoards won, aboutBoards tied, aboutBoards lost, about
9927,412,000180,00013,504,000
A2s13,504,000180,00027,412,000

Exact total: 24 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.

99 against A2s read as odds
HandEquity as odds (to 1)Wins one deal inLoses one deal inPot odds needed to call (to 1)
992.0231.4993.0430.494
A2s0.4943.0431.4992.023

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

99 prefers low rainbow flops (nine high or lower), where it holds 78.45%, and likes monotone flops least, where it holds 62.86%. 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 A2s by flop texture, in percent
FlopShare of flops99 winsTiesA2s wins99 equity
Rainbow, ten or higher25.22066.2520.19933.54966.352
Rainbow, nine or lower5.68977.9341.03421.03278.451
Two-tone46.54565.2020.32434.47465.364
Monotone5.21261.6512.41235.93762.857
Paired17.33469.2240.30130.47569.375

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

Start from the random-hand figures, 72.06% for 99 and 57.38% for A2s. This opponent changes them by -5.14 and -24.30 points.

99 and A2s here compared with each against a random hand, in percent
CaseEquity hereAgainst a random handChange in pointsTimes the random-hand equity
99, all flops66.92272.057-5.1350.92874
99, rainbow, ten or higher66.35272.057-5.7050.92083
99, rainbow, nine or lower78.45172.057+6.3941.08874
99, two-tone65.36472.057-6.6930.90712
99, monotone62.85772.057-9.2000.87232
99, paired69.37572.057-2.6820.96278
A2s, all flops33.07857.379-24.3010.57648
A2s, rainbow, ten or higher33.64857.379-23.7310.58642
A2s, rainbow, nine or lower21.54957.379-35.8300.37556
A2s, two-tone34.63657.379-22.7430.60364
A2s, monotone37.14357.379-20.2360.64733
A2s, paired30.62557.379-26.7540.53373

Does a shared suit matter?

Suit overlap shows up in the numbers. With a suit in common 99 has 67.22% equity, and with none in common it has 66.62%. 99 does better with a shared suit, by 0.60 points.

99 against A2s by suit overlap, in percent
DealsSpecific dealsShare of deals99 winsTiesA2s wins99 equity
Share a suit1250.0066.9810.48332.53667.222
No shared suit1250.0066.4260.39233.18266.622

How often this matchup comes up

99 against A2s is made up of 24 specific-card matchups in one seat order, 0.0015% of the 1,624,350 ordered deals, and 48 counting both seat orders, 0.0030%.

A worked example

A $100 all-in from each player makes a $200 pot, and the exact equity says 99 gets $133.84 of it on average and A2s gets $66.16.

Out of 1,000 deals you should see around 667 outright wins for 99, 329 for A2s, and 4 split pots.

The same matchup from the other side

If you came looking for A2s against 99, the numbers are the same with the hands swapped: 33.08% and 66.92%.

Open the calculator with 9s9h against Ad2d 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

This is an exact count with no sampling. For the 24 ways to deal one 99 and one A2s without reusing a card, grouped by suit pattern, every one of the 1,712,304 possible boards is dealt and both seven-card hands are compared. A tie counts as half a win in the equity column, and each board is counted once under each of its ten three-card flops.

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

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