---
title: "A4s vs 98s: preflop equity"
url: "https://georgelipoker.com/equity/a4s-vs-98s.md"
canonical_url: "https://georgelipoker.com/equity/a4s-vs-98s"
last_updated: "2026-10-23"
type: "reference"
summary: "Who is ahead, A4s or 98s? A4s leads 54.73% to 45.27% before the flop, counted exactly over every board, with the split by flop type and suit."
related: ["https://georgelipoker.com/equity/a4s-vs-22.md", "https://georgelipoker.com/equity/a4s-vs-97s.md", "https://georgelipoker.com/equity/a3s-vs-98s.md"]
---

# A4s vs 98s: preflop equity

Who is ahead, A4s or 98s? A4s leads 54.73% to 45.27% before the flop, counted exactly over every board, with the split by flop type and suit.

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 against 98s: the numbers

**Exact preflop results for A4s against 98s, in percent**

| Hand | Wins | Ties | Loses | Equity |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| A4s | 54.481 | 0.506 | 45.013 | 54.734 |
| 98s | 45.013 | 0.506 | 54.481 | 45.266 |

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**

| Hand | Boards won, about | Boards tied, about | Boards lost, about |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| A4s | 14,926,000 | 139,000 | 12,332,000 |
| 98s | 12,332,000 | 139,000 | 14,926,000 |

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**

| Hand | Equity as odds (to 1) | Wins one deal in | Loses one deal in | Pot odds needed to call (to 1) |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| A4s | 1.209 | 1.836 | 2.222 | 0.827 |
| 98s | 0.827 | 2.222 | 1.836 | 1.209 |

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**

| Flop | Share of flops | A4s wins | Ties | 98s wins | A4s equity |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Rainbow, ten or higher | 25.220 | 57.071 | 0.204 | 42.725 | 57.173 |
| Rainbow, nine or lower | 5.689 | 37.700 | 0.660 | 61.640 | 38.030 |
| Two-tone | 46.727 | 53.385 | 0.265 | 46.350 | 53.518 |
| Monotone | 5.273 | 51.123 | 3.428 | 45.449 | 52.837 |
| Paired | 17.091 | 60.278 | 0.661 | 39.061 | 60.608 |

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**

| Case | Equity here | Against a random hand | Change in points | Times the random-hand equity |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| A4s, all flops | 54.734 | 59.034 | -4.300 | 0.92716 |
| A4s, rainbow, ten or higher | 57.173 | 59.034 | -1.861 | 0.96848 |
| A4s, rainbow, nine or lower | 38.030 | 59.034 | -21.004 | 0.64421 |
| A4s, two-tone | 53.518 | 59.034 | -5.516 | 0.90656 |
| A4s, monotone | 52.837 | 59.034 | -6.197 | 0.89503 |
| A4s, paired | 60.608 | 59.034 | +1.574 | 1.02666 |
| 98s, all flops | 45.266 | 50.801 | -5.535 | 0.89105 |
| 98s, rainbow, ten or higher | 42.827 | 50.801 | -7.974 | 0.84303 |
| 98s, rainbow, nine or lower | 61.970 | 50.801 | +11.169 | 1.21986 |
| 98s, two-tone | 46.482 | 50.801 | -4.319 | 0.91498 |
| 98s, monotone | 47.163 | 50.801 | -3.638 | 0.92839 |
| 98s, paired | 39.392 | 50.801 | -11.409 | 0.77542 |

## 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**

| Deals | Specific deals | Share of deals | A4s wins | Ties | 98s wins | A4s equity |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Share a suit | 4 | 25.00 | 56.014 | 0.588 | 43.398 | 56.308 |
| No shared suit | 12 | 75.00 | 53.970 | 0.479 | 45.551 | 54.209 |

## 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.

## Keep exploring

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.

- [Open As4s against 9h8h in the equity calculator](https://georgelipoker.com/tools/equity-calculator.md#p1=As4s&p2=9h8h)
- [A4s combos](https://georgelipoker.com/combos/a4s.md)
- [98s combos](https://georgelipoker.com/combos/98s.md)
- [A4s vs 22](https://georgelipoker.com/equity/a4s-vs-22.md)
- [A4s vs 97s](https://georgelipoker.com/equity/a4s-vs-97s.md)
- [A3s vs 98s](https://georgelipoker.com/equity/a3s-vs-98s.md)
- [All hand matchups](https://georgelipoker.com/equity.md)

## 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.

## Related

- [A4s vs 22: preflop equity](https://georgelipoker.com/equity/a4s-vs-22.md)
- [A4s vs 97s: preflop equity](https://georgelipoker.com/equity/a4s-vs-97s.md)
- [A3s vs 98s: preflop equity](https://georgelipoker.com/equity/a3s-vs-98s.md)