99 vs QTo: preflop equity

Averaged over every possible board, 99 is ahead of QTo by 9.26 points of equity, 54.63% to 45.37%.

99

54.63%

Wins 54.43%, ties 0.39%

QTo

45.37%

Wins 45.18%, ties 0.39%

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

99 against QTo: the numbers

Exact preflop results for 99 against QTo, in percent
HandWinsTiesLosesEquity
9954.4330.38845.17954.627
QTo45.1790.38854.43345.373

The first hand is a pocket pair; the second is an offsuit hand. One hand holds a pair and the other holds two cards that both outrank it, which keeps the equity closer than most people expect.

With only 9.26 points between them, the board decides this matchup far more than the cards in hand. 0.39% of boards are ties, so the equity of each hand is its win rate plus half of that.

For context, 99 sits at number 6 of 169 starting hands and QTo at number 47 when each is run against a random hand.

Boards behind the percentages: 123,285,888 counted in all
HandBoards won, aboutBoards tied, aboutBoards lost, about
9967,108,000478,00055,699,000
QTo55,699,000478,00067,108,000

The board total is exact, 72 deals at 1,712,304 boards each. Won, tied and lost counts are rounded to the nearest thousand from the five-decimal percentages.

99 against QTo read as odds
HandEquity as odds (to 1)Wins one deal inLoses one deal inPot odds needed to call (to 1)
991.2041.8372.2130.831
QTo0.8312.2131.8371.204

In the last column, a pot-to-call ratio at or above the figure makes a call break even or better at this equity.

Who is ahead on which flops

Low rainbow flops (nine high or lower) are the best for 99 (79.33%); rainbow flops topped by a ten or better are the worst (46.99%). Rainbow flops topped by a ten or better favor QTo, the hand that is behind overall.

99 against QTo by flop texture, in percent
FlopShare of flops99 winsTiesQTo wins99 equity
Rainbow, ten or higher24.71746.9010.18252.91746.992
Rainbow, nine or lower6.31478.8740.90620.22079.327
Two-tone46.48553.0960.31546.58953.254
Monotone5.15150.0041.70148.29550.855
Paired17.33361.1730.29538.53261.321

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

Each hand has a baseline against a random hand: 72.06% for 99, 57.29% for QTo. Here the change is -17.43 and -11.92 points.

99 and QTo here compared with each against a random hand, in percent
CaseEquity hereAgainst a random handChange in pointsTimes the random-hand equity
99, all flops54.62772.057-17.4300.75811
99, rainbow, ten or higher46.99272.057-25.0650.65215
99, rainbow, nine or lower79.32772.057+7.2701.10089
99, two-tone53.25472.057-18.8030.73905
99, monotone50.85572.057-21.2020.70576
99, paired61.32172.057-10.7360.85101
QTo, all flops45.37357.291-11.9180.79197
QTo, rainbow, ten or higher53.00857.291-4.2830.92524
QTo, rainbow, nine or lower20.67357.291-36.6180.36084
QTo, two-tone46.74657.291-10.5450.81594
QTo, monotone49.14557.291-8.1460.85781
QTo, paired38.67957.291-18.6120.67513

Does a shared suit matter?

Looking only at deals where the hands share a suit, 99 has 54.54%; looking only at deals where they do not, 55.07%. 99 does better with no shared suit, by 0.53 points.

99 against QTo by suit overlap, in percent
DealsSpecific dealsShare of deals99 winsTiesQTo wins99 equity
Share a suit6083.3354.3380.40345.25954.539
No shared suit1216.6754.9120.30844.78055.066

How often this matchup comes up

Counting specific cards, 99 against QTo appears in 72 of the 1,624,350 ordered heads-up deals (0.0044%), and in 144 when the seats are swapped too (0.0089%).

A worked example

Say each player puts $100 in before the flop, making a $200 pot. On average 99 takes back $109.26 of it, which is $9.26 more than it put in, and QTo takes back $90.74, $9.26 less than it put in.

A thousand deals look like this: 99 takes 544, QTo takes 452, 4 are ties.

The same matchup from the other side

If you came looking for QTo against 99, the numbers are the same with the hands swapped: 45.37% and 54.63%.

Open the calculator with 9s9h against QdTc 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

Nothing here is simulated. The 72 deals of 99 against QTo fall into a few suit patterns, each dealt against all 1,712,304 boards, with both best five-card hands compared on every board. Ties give each hand half a win, and the flop rows count a board under each of its ten flops.

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

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