A4s vs 98s: preflop equity

If A4s and 98s get all the chips in before the flop, A4s owns 54.73% of the pot in the long run and 98s owns 45.27%.

A4s

54.73%

Wins 54.48%, ties 0.51%

98s

45.27%

Wins 45.01%, ties 0.51%

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

A4s against 98s: the numbers

Exact preflop results for A4s against 98s, in percent
HandWinsTiesLosesEquity
A4s54.4810.50645.01354.734
98s45.0130.50654.48145.266

Here suited hands face each other, A4s on one side and 98s on the other. With no overlap in ranks, every card that pairs one hand is a card that does not pair the other.

With only 9.46 points between them, the board decides this matchup far more than the cards in hand. A split pot comes up on 0.51% of boards, so the wins and the equity differ by half of that.

The hand ranking puts A4s at 35 and 98s at 83 out of 169 starting hands.

Boards behind the percentages: 27,396,864 counted in all
HandBoards won, aboutBoards tied, aboutBoards lost, about
A4s14,926,000139,00012,332,000
98s12,332,000139,00014,926,000

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.

A4s against 98s read as odds
HandEquity as odds (to 1)Wins one deal inLoses one deal inPot odds needed to call (to 1)
A4s1.2091.8362.2220.827
98s0.8272.2221.8361.209

The last column is the smallest pot odds, written as a pot-to-call ratio, at which a call breaks even with this equity.

Who is ahead on which flops

If you know the kind of flop that came, the numbers shift: A4s holds 60.61% on paired flops and 38.03% on low rainbow flops (nine high or lower). A4s is the favorite overall but falls behind on low rainbow flops (nine high or lower).

A4s against 98s by flop texture, in percent
FlopShare of flopsA4s winsTies98s winsA4s equity
Rainbow, ten or higher25.22057.0710.20442.72557.173
Rainbow, nine or lower5.68937.7000.66061.64038.030
Two-tone46.72753.3850.26546.35053.518
Monotone5.27351.1233.42845.44952.837
Paired17.09160.2780.66139.06160.608

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

Against one random hand instead, A4s holds 59.03% and 98s holds 50.80%. Facing each other changes that by -4.30 points for A4s and -5.53 points for 98s.

A4s and 98s here compared with each against a random hand, in percent
CaseEquity hereAgainst a random handChange in pointsTimes the random-hand equity
A4s, all flops54.73459.034-4.3000.92716
A4s, rainbow, ten or higher57.17359.034-1.8610.96848
A4s, rainbow, nine or lower38.03059.034-21.0040.64421
A4s, two-tone53.51859.034-5.5160.90656
A4s, monotone52.83759.034-6.1970.89503
A4s, paired60.60859.034+1.5741.02666
98s, all flops45.26650.801-5.5350.89105
98s, rainbow, ten or higher42.82750.801-7.9740.84303
98s, rainbow, nine or lower61.97050.801+11.1691.21986
98s, two-tone46.48250.801-4.3190.91498
98s, monotone47.16350.801-3.6380.92839
98s, paired39.39250.801-11.4090.77542

Does a shared suit matter?

Split by suits, the deals give A4s 56.31% when the hands overlap in a suit and 54.21% when they do not. A4s does better with a shared suit, by 2.10 points.

A4s against 98s by suit overlap, in percent
DealsSpecific dealsShare of dealsA4s winsTies98s winsA4s equity
Share a suit425.0056.0140.58843.39856.308
No shared suit1275.0053.9700.47945.55154.209

How often this matchup comes up

How often does it happen? 16 of the 1,624,350 ordered deals (0.0010%) are A4s against 98s, and 32 (0.0020%) if either hand may sit in either seat.

A worked example

Try it with money: two players each put in $100 and the whole board runs out every possible way. A4s averages $109.46 from the $200, up $9.46; 98s averages $90.54, down $9.46.

Out of 1,000 deals you should see around 545 outright wins for A4s, 450 for 98s, and 5 split pots.

The same matchup from the other side

98s against A4s adds nothing new: it is 45.27% for 98s and 54.73% for A4s, the same figures reversed.

As4s against 9h8h 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.

How this was computed

Method: exact enumeration. The 16 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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